


Special

by Miggy



Series: Special [1]
Category: Glee, Marvel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Amnesia, Crossover, Gen, Superheroes, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-18
Updated: 2012-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-24 17:04:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 254,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/265840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miggy/pseuds/Miggy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a part of something special makes you special. (Also, having superpowers.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Foreword, July 1, 2014:
> 
> This story was started in the summer after season 2 of Glee. Although it occasionally brings in minor canon facts from after that (such as Julia Chang's name), readers can assume that it diverges sharply after the events of "New York" and pays no attention to the canon Glee world afterward. Since initial publication it has been edited for clarity, internal continuity, emotional weight, and other fiddly details, but has only had one "correction" made to it. (That would be the labeling of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s alert system, so as you can see, the changes are very minor.) 
> 
> Mostly, this means I'm proud of calling her "Nancy Abrams" before the character even existed onscreen.
> 
> The Specialverse assumes solid knowledge of the core Glee crew and a few important guest stars, but only passing familiarity with the Marvel 'verse. The Marvel elements in this story are a grab bag from various Marvel canons, from the ever-popular MCU to my personal favorite character presentation by a particular writer on a particular title. If you have seen (and understood) The Avengers, you should be ready to read in the Specialverse with confidence. Although there are many more Marvel references within, from the Great Lakes Avengers to X-Treme X-Men to Spider-Man, they are either in passing or are explained for new readers.
> 
> A custom eBook, complete with cover (courtesy of donnaseabrook on Tumblr) is available at my website: redshirts.net. It also has links to supplemental materials, such as the soundtrack.
> 
> I loved and still love Cory Monteith and Finn Hudson, and so a lot of this story is tough to read and tougher to write. In the end, I'm finishing this trilogy for Finn. When all is said and done, here's a happy ending.

Noah Puckerman was thrown into a concrete wall so hard that it cratered. He spat out blood and grinned when a tooth didn't follow. "Is that all you got?" he asked his attacker as he lunged forward. His fist impacted the body in front of him, crumpled its armor, and he could hear something inside it snap. The figure wrapped in shadows slumped to the ground and didn't get back up.

A worried voice echoed through his head. Puck glowered and sent a thought back at the source. _Stop distracting me, fearless freaking leader._ Another thought followed, but Puck tried his best to ignore it. In the heat of battle he made his own rules. 

"I have no idea who these guys are," Tina said as she knelt next to the motionless figure. Her bare hand reached into the shadows, hesitating on the way, and then clamped onto whatever was beneath. She shuddered and smiled as energy flowed out of their enemy and into her. Her eyes soon glowed. "Have you ever seen them?" she asked, still with the faint echo that followed absorbing another person.

Puck shook his head. "No. They hit like a sixteen-wheeler, though. And it sounded like the girls could barely get bolts through those shadows." Off in the distance, around a corner, he could hear the sounds of fighting. There was an occasional rush of steam when fireballs met jets of ice.

"I've been trying to drain them so they don't get up again," she explained. "I think we're clear here. Come on, let's go help the others." When he nodded, she led them back to the main group.

Any confidence was unfounded: they were overwhelmed. Finn and Rachel frantically tried to coordinate everyone, but it was to no avail. Their mysterious foes somehow managed to fight back against Brittany's tears in reality; a few even snapped shut with audible crackles of energy. From inside Mercedes' force field, Quinn and Santana desperately tried to fight the figures off from a distance. The enemies kept advancing.

Mike slid between enemies despite the risk and clocked them across their formless faces. He couldn't hit anywhere near as hard as Puck, but their foes couldn't lay a hand on him. The only other person risking close combat was Kurt, and although he wielded swords it made Puck's gut clench to see how close some of the swings came to him. He couldn't dodge as well as Mike and a blow would inevitably land.

"Hurry up with that blast, Mercedes!" Rachel ordered. Her sonic blasts pinged their foes with a dozen overlapping notes each second, but that barely slowed their advance.

"I'm trying," Mercedes gritted out. Inside her force field, Puck could see her energy attack wrapped around her hands. When it reached her elbows she'd be ready to fire, and that usually ended their fights for them. He hoped they'd make it that long.

Mike's foot snapped up and caught a figure in the head, but it wasn't strong enough to end things. He had to fling himself away to avoid the return blow and wound up crashing inelegantly into Kurt, who stumbled forward. All Kurt's effort clearly went into not stabbing himself, and so he was left open to the strike that caught him in the ribs. He hit the wall hard, slid down, and stayed still.

A red film washed across Puck's vision before he heard Finn's voice in his head. _Puck! Calm down, he's okay! I can still feel him. He's just knocked out!_ It almost worked, but then one of those things made a move toward his fallen teammate. Rage surged. Puck roared, lunged forward, and ripped off the nearest shadowy head. It and the abandoned body disappeared into a puff of smoke; he grinned ferally at the sudden success and went for a second round.

Brittany slammed against the wall and crumpled. Rachel screamed and hit the ground. Every sound further shredded Puck's control. He tried to fight the shadows back, but he was the only one strong enough to rip them apart and there were too goddamn many. They kept advancing on everyone, Puck's fists couldn't fly fast enough, and Mercedes' arms only glowed halfway up to her elbows....

A deafening chorus of bullets rang out. Puck instinctively lunged to use himself as a shield, only to realize a second later that he was in no pain and that the shots hadn't been aimed at them. The strange, glowing bullets were instead lodged in the shadowy figures, who began to crumple and fade where they lay. He allowed himself a moment of relief that they'd been saved before refocusing his attention on the injuries in front of him.

"Who are you?" Finn asked warily as he knelt next to Puck.

The agent holding one of those beyond-kickass guns flipped open a badge. "Agent Klemmer, S.H.I.E.L.D. You children are violating a government security clearance and have a lot of explaining to do."

Mercedes' force blast abruptly went off. It punched a hole through three reinforced walls in a row; she'd had the sense to direct it away from anyone. "Sorry," she said sheepishly. "It built up too much to stop." 

Agent Klemmer raised one eyebrow. "Who's in charge here?"

"We are," Finn said as he helped Rachel up. She still looked dizzy.

"So, not your techie?" Her question made Puck realize that he hadn't heard Artie's voice in his headset since they broke into the facility, and as if he'd been cued, the boy spoke reluctantly up.

"Hey, guys. Uh, I think they might have found out what we were doing."

"Come on," she said shortly. "You have a meeting with Colonel Fury."

As if they were trying to hold onto some shred of dignity, Quinn held her head high and asked, "Don't you mean that this... Colonel Fury _wants_ to meet with us?"

"No," the woman said shortly. "He's going to meet with you."

_I think we're really in trouble_ , Finn thought at everyone as they were herded toward the exit. Santana, out of her fire form, helped Brittany keep her balance as she walked. Puck watched Kurt limp on a twisted ankle and picked him up despite his protests.

_No shit, Sherlock_ Puck thought back at him. Finn didn't pass that on to the rest of the group.

* * *

"We're being taken in helicopters," Tina said weakly as the group was led to the roof. "That's, um, fun."

"Do we really have to ride in there?" Mike asked with a half-hearted gesture between himself and Brittany. "Because the two of us could just fly and follow... okay, never mind, we're getting in."

"What'd we do?" Kurt whispered against Puck's ear as they made their way into the chopper. Puck moved too quickly and put pressure on Kurt's injured ankle; he apologized instantly when Kurt hissed in pain. "We were just trying to find out—"

"What your parents were working on as part of the project that turned you into metahumans, we know," said Klemmer. At their surprise, she tapped her earset. "Great directional microphones."

"Wow," Artie's voice said in Puck's other ear. "Nice. I'll have to see if I can put together something that good."

"You won't be doing anything," Klemmer said. "Buckle up, kids. You're headed to the boss upstairs."

"Are you going to tell us who those shadowy things were?" Rachel demanded as she strapped herself in next to Finn. Finn kept checking on Kurt's ankle; both Kurt and Puck batted him away. "They could have killed us!"

"Yes, they could have," Klemmer said as she settled into the co-pilot's seat. "And whose fault would that have been?"

Realizing they weren't getting out of answering for whatever crimes they'd committed, the group sank morosely into their seats and didn't speak as the blades came to life and they lifted into the air. They glided past a million glowing windows; this 'Colonel Fury' seemed to be deeper inside Manhattan. "We keep getting higher," Rachel said just loud enough to be heard over the noise of the helicopter.

Puck looked outside and frowned. She was right. They were well over the spire of the Empire State Building: why? "Oh," he said dumbly when he recognized the giant flying helicarrier. He'd watched the armored airship pass overhead countless times without knowing to whom it belonged: Colonel Fury, apparently.

"Out," Klemmer demanded when the two helicopters landed. They disgorged themselves onto the landing pad. Santana still supported Brittany, and when Kurt's ankle seemed to be hurting him even more Puck didn't hesitate to carry him again. "We're making a scene," Kurt said as the group followed the agent inside.

"You love making scenes," Puck retorted. Kurt couldn't help but smile.

An imposing man with an eyepatch waited for them at their destination. If this wasn't Colonel Fury, Puck would gladly trade him for whatever was behind Door Number Two. He didn't like the looks of Angry Eyepatch. He gave the impression that he didn't have time for any bullshit and thought that every last one of them was full to the brim of it. "Sit down," Fury ordered, just as Puck saw the name on his desk and swallowed. Yep, he was the guy. "Leaders, raise your hands."

Rachel and Finn reluctantly complied.

Fury studied them for a moment, then pursed his lips and nodded. "You mind telling me what you found in that building tonight?"

Kurt spoke up, clearly confused. "Your agent already heard. We just wanted to read about what our parents did."

"I didn't ask what you came in there looking for," Fury snapped, and Kurt cowed under the tone. "I asked what you found."

"We found a bunch of guys who kicked our asses," Santana said. She looked ready to continue when a door at the side opened and, to their collective surprise, Artie wheeled in. "How the hell did you get up here?"

"Apparently I deserve my own helicopter escort," Artie said weakly. "Kinda surprised the neighbors when it landed." Artie had been directing them from his bedroom in his Hunters Point home. He'd built his own communications station inside a modified Playstation case. It was strong enough to reach Europe, could carry two dozen simultaneous conversations, and it still played all his games. "Nice flying, by the way. That road looked like a tight fit."

The man escorting him didn't smile at the compliment, and Artie shrank further into his chair and quickly wheeled himself to join the rest of his friends.

"Great comm work," Quinn said darkly as he approached. "You cut out the second we stepped inside that place."

"Not my fault!" Artie protested. "It had some sort of freaky energy field that—"

"That what?" Fury cut in, having been waiting to spring back on them when they least expected it. "What sort of readings were you getting off it?"

"...Freaky?" Artie repeated. He gulped a deep breath when Fury was suddenly in his face, living up to his name. 

"You think this is a game? You think S.H.I.E.L.D. is fooling around? You kids put your toes way the hell over the line tonight and there is no going back. Not with where you went, not with the attention you got."

"But we don't know who the hell they were!" Puck said, almost yelling. It was probably a bad idea but he couldn't help it. He'd swung between adrenaline and panic that night, and their interrogation on some weirdass flying aircraft carrier wasn't helping to clear out his system. 

"Puck," Kurt said in a thin, reedy voice. "Hands. Getting angry. Hands." Puck gulped and instantly let go. Kurt groaned and rubbed where bruises would show the next day and Puck felt sick with guilt. 

"We don't know anything!" Mercedes said. Tears stood in her eyes. "We know our parents all work together. We know we have to go to school together because they do some sort of government... whatever. And we know that whatever they did together at work, it turned us into this. We just want to know what that something is. That's it. We try to help people. We're good. We're the good guys!"

"No. You're the minors who broke into a top-secret government facility, and we're debating whether to treat you as adults for your punishment. Who's responsible for getting you through those doors?" Fury's irritation grew as they stayed silent. "Who?"

In hesitant unison, Artie and Kurt raised their hands. "I hacked into the systems remotely," Artie mumbled, "and took care of the outer security door and the camera system. He illusioned his way past the guards and popped the inner doors to let everyone in."

"How?" Fury asked. Interest seemed to momentarily triumph over anger. "There's no path between—"

"Air vents," Kurt admitted.

Fury's eye narrowed. "They're tiny. I could see Romanoff making that trip, or Natchios, but... fine," he said when Kurt smiled weakly. "We had records of all of you using your powers inside the building," he continued, stepping back to address everyone. "You girls are hitting some serious temperatures," he said with nods toward Quinn and Santana. "If you keep developing, you'll be looking at Iceman and Human Torch territory. And you. Those tears in reality...." His lips pursed as he looked at Brittany. "Reminds me a little of the Scarlet Witch. You got any idea how much trouble she's caused over the years?"

"A lot?" Brittany ventured.

He hissed in annoyance and started pacing around the room. "A telepath, a tank, a fighter practically as agile as Spider-Man... you kids are already a pain in my organization's collective ass and you've only been together for half a year. And now we gotta decide what we have to do to keep everyone safe after your little stunt tonight."

Rachel cut in, pleading. "We know it was wrong to break in, but what was _so_ wrong that it deserves all this? All right, so we broke a security clearance. We're very sorry. If you just tell our parents, then I'm sure they'll ground us and we can put it all behind us. We just wanted to know what might happen to us with our powers," she finished with a wavering smile.

Fury shook his head. "You think we had all those security doors there for your parents? No. They've been relocated. You know damn well what was inside that building... and if you really don't, well, we can't take that chance." His eye hardened. "So my colleagues and I are debating between mindwiping you, imprisoning you for life, or just having you all executed."

The response was chaos. The group sprang to their feet, or pounded their fists and yelled, or simply sat in shock and mouthed his words. Mercedes clutched her seat cushion so firmly that she nearly ripped it apart. Quinn and Mike shook where they sat. Puck felt one of Kurt's hands leave his to fumble for Finn's.

"Sit down," Fury yelled. Something about the man made them follow orders immediately. "You think I want to order a bunch of kids killed? No. I don't. But your idiot leaders may have set you up for that, because they had no idea what they were getting you into." He nodded at Rachel and Finn. "That's right. You get to take the blame, leaders."

"You're not really going to kill us, are you?" Tina asked. Tears filled her eyes. "We're really sorry. We didn't know."

Fury looked away, swore to himself, and rubbed a hand over his face. "No one here wants to kill you. We'll imprison you if we have to, but... option number one is that I put in a little call to Xavier's and we get a telepath to mindwipe you with that big round room of theirs." 

Finn let out a short, relieved laugh. "So what, just erase our memories of tonight? Okay, that's easy. Do that."

"Speak for yourself," Santana said. "I don't want some mutant messing around with my head."

"So what, you want to go to jail?" Finn asked.

"Some of us actually have brains to worry about and we don't want a frontal lobotomy!"

"Not just of tonight," Fury said before the argument could develop further. "You've caught the attention of the wrong people. Prison would protect the world from you. It'd also protect you from them. If we mindwipe you, you'll stay free... but it won't be where anyone would expect to find you. And you won't remember who you are."

"Wait, what?" Quinn asked, half-laughing. "Where would we go? That sounds crazy. This is just... you can't do this." She swallowed. "You can't do this. Any of what you said, you can't."

"We're in a giant floating fortress and they don't have to let us go," Finn said nervously. "I kinda think they can."

"Why don't you stay here tonight?" Fury said. He smiled, but it wasn't pleasant. "We have rooms for... visitors. You can think over your options. Those of you who got injured, you can stop by the infirmary and have your wounds looked at." As before, nothing he said sounded like a question. With a sigh, they nodded at each other because there was nothing else to be done. Kurt was helped away by some S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and Rachel and Brittany followed to be checked for concussions.

"This sucks," Puck said to Finn as they were led into the bowels of the ship. The agent guiding them inspected a list, and then gestured at a room for the two of them. Mike and Artie were pointed firmly toward a different door. When they stepped inside, the lock closed with a final-sounding thud.

"It's pretty much past 'sucks,'" Finn laughed darkly. He traced his hand around a metal ring on the wall; a small porthole showed the lights of Manhattan below. "You could punch through this," he said after a moment of consideration.

"Yeah," Puck said, "but I couldn't fit through it." He doubted he could widen the hole beyond what was already there. Plexiglass was one thing; reinforced metal might be another. Who knew what kind of technology the helicarrier used?

Finn frowned at the sight. "But Kurt could."

"And then, what, he falls?"

"Mike can fly." Finn seemed to remember that Mike had been directed to another room, and slumped. "And Mike's not in here. Or Kurt."

Puck raised his eyebrows. Bingo, moron. "My mom's gotta be flipping out. I didn't think we'd be this late; I said I'd be home. Do you think your folks know you do this stuff?"

Finn managed to laugh. "Crazy superhero stuff? I don't think so. Breaking into their work? Definitely not." He sat on the edge of one of the cots and rubbed his face. "Eyepatch Guy really doesn't seem to want to, um, kill us. But do you think he's serious about...?"

"Yeah," Puck finally said. "I think he is. He either wants to stick us in jail or brainwash us and move us to... I don't know. Nebraska." They sat quietly for a while until Puck asked, "How's everyone doing?"

Finn closed his eyes. A minute later he opened them and said, "Everyone's pretty scared. But we all figure that killing's not really going to happen. We hope." They both looked unhappy at the idea that they could only _hope_ for a well-funded, well-armed organization not to kill them and sat again in silence. The engines keeping them aloft thrummed faintly in the distance. He could feel the vibrations in the deck plating. 

The door opened again and Puck shot to his feet even before he saw it was Kurt. "Hey," Kurt said groggily. "We have to triple up in here. It sounds like they wanted you watching me." He was walking without a limp, but he wasn't steady. He looked on the verge of losing his balance with every step.

"You okay?" Puck asked him carefully as he grabbed Kurt's shoulders and guided him to the closest cot. Like Miss America, Finn looked ready to step in if Puck couldn't fulfill his fretting duties. Kurt had lost his balance during the fight earlier, but only because he'd taken Mike Chang squarely to the small of his back. Left to his own devices, he was in control of his body... usually.

"They shot me with something," Kurt said. He rubbed the side of his neck. His eyes were a bit unfocused, Puck saw when he checked. "I feel kind of out of it. They shot Brit and Rachel, too."

Puck and Finn exchanged a concerned look. It was unlikely those two girls had needed an injection of painkillers like Kurt would have. "See if they're okay," Puck murmured to Finn. "I'll watch him."

Kurt didn't seem to realize who was with him as he slipped quickly toward sleep. Puck couldn't blame him too much for the mistake; he was used to falling asleep in his own bed, in a small, two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. He probably talked to Finn a lot as he drifted off. "Mom and Dad'll be worried," he said. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be talking on auto-pilot. "We can't let them know. It's a secret. We'd get in trouble if they knew."

Sadly, Puck knew he didn't mean breaking into a top-secret government facility, or being captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. and held captive with deadly threats hanging over their heads. He simply meant that their parents couldn't know that they went out every night, hunted down petty criminals, and thumped some heads. Even that would get them grounded through graduation.

His thumb rubbed soft circles on Kurt's temple until he stopped whispering and relaxed into sleep. Puck sighed and looked around their small room: the riveted metal walls, the porthole looking down at freedom, Finn silently measuring everyone's terror.

He wished he knew how big a punishment they'd earn for what had happened that night.

* * *

When the doors opened the next morning and they were told to follow an agent, Kurt lost his balance again as the helicarrier banked sharply to the right. Puck and Finn did as well, but it was normal for them to have to brace themselves. It wasn't for Kurt. Whatever they'd shot him with was still affecting him, and that had Puck more worried than being a prisoner on that ship.

"So," Colonel Fury said when they returned to his office. Puck wondered if he'd slept. He seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn't waste time on it. "Have you considered my offer?"

"What offer?" Rachel asked. She rubbed the side of her neck where Kurt had; Puck frowned at the sight. "All you said is that you wanted to kill us, imprison us for life, or forever change our memories and identities."

"Exactly," Fury said mildly. "Those are the three offers. Which do you want?"

"You can't do this," Mercedes said. "We're just kids. We're _fifteen._ You are going to be in so much trouble when people find out what you've been doing to us."

"I can do whatever is necessary to secure national security, and right now that means having you pick Door A, B, or C." He folded his arms across his chest. "I'm guessing you're not a fan of Door A. This is real, kids. You're not walking out of here with your powers intact. Three of you have already been neutralized, and we'll give the rest of you your shots before you leave."

Rachel, Kurt, and Brittany clutched the side of their necks in unison. They looked horrified, as did everyone else. Puck felt a stab of fresh rage at the idea that this guy thought he could just _neuter_ them. Like the group hadn't reacted at all, Fury continued, "Obviously you can't keep your powers in prison; you'd break out. That's why it was so important to knock those two out of commission last night," he added with gestures toward Kurt and Brittany. "I didn't want someone sneaking into our control room to destroy the computers, or randomly turning her cell door into... pudding." He made an annoyed noise and muttered something about chaos powers.

That didn't distract him for long, and he picked right back up with his explanation. "And just as obviously, if you're going to be normal kids well away from where anyone would know you, you have to be _normal_ kids. No memories of parents doing secret work, no memories of fighting crime, no memories of New York... and no powers."

"But our parents' jobs are all here," Artie protested weakly. "There's only the one place that does that kind of stuff. They can't—"

"Your parents wouldn't come with you. Your parents wouldn't even remember you. The memory wipes would affect everyone: you, them, the people in that town."

Horror slid up and down Puck's spine. He tried not to shiver or grow ill. "I'll take jail," he said flatly. Maybe he shouldn't have spoken up; they might think he was speaking for everyone. Still, he suspected that they felt the same way. If they went to jail, then they would still be them and they'd have the hope of getting things fixed. Agreeing to this mindwipe would be barely better than the execution.

Another agent came in and murmured something to Fury. He frowned, nodded, and said to the group, "I'll be back shortly. I'll expect your decision then. Consider your options very, very carefully." The door seemed to echo when he closed it behind him.

Conversation started immediately. "Would he seriously kill us?" Santana asked.

Finn half-laughed, "How would I know?" He saw everyone staring at him, blushed, and said softly, "Oh. Right. Reading minds."

"Isn't this just Alanis-level ironic?" Santana sneered. "We're the only team on the planet that has a grade-A certified moron for our telepath. And now it's too late for you to check. Awesome." Finn was terrible at picking out a specific stranger's mind from a crowd; he couldn't be sure he was reading Fury's mind unless he could see the man in front of him.

"Lay off him," Kurt said darkly. He still looked unsettled at the revelation of what Fury had done to his powers. 

Around the room, others comforted each other as best they could. Quinn stared at a shard of ice above her palm as Mercedes insisted that they would be fine. Santana let go of her anger at Finn in favor of resting her forehead lightly against Brittany's temple. She whispered soothing words to her girlfriend as Brittany tried futilely to snap her fingers and tear reality.

They all seemed so damned resigned, Puck realized sickly as he looked at everyone. Mercedes' words sounded like lies. Mike looked hurt as Tina ignored him; her conversation with Artie about what they might be able to do was pointless and they both clearly knew it. Puck turned to Kurt, expecting him to be there, but he'd moved to talk with Finn. That stung, but he knew they were talking about what their parents would think and how they couldn't possibly just leave them. They'd pick jail over leaving their folks. Puck could handle himself in jail, and so could Finn, but it nauseated him to picture Kurt in there.

The two of them talking had left Rachel alone in her misery. Puck scooted over to join her. "Hey," he said.

"Hey," she replied and sniffled wetly. "I'm so sorry I got us into all of this."

"Not your fault, come on. We all wanted to know. We all thought...." Puck rubbed the back of his head. "We thought dealing with some moron thugs on the street meant we were badasses. Just because we could get into that place, we figured we could get out. We all did. Everyone got knocked off-balance by this, okay?"

She shrugged. "It seems like that's been our lives, hasn't it? Being taken by surprise."

Laughing, he gathered her against his shoulder. That was an understatement like saying her bat mitzvah had been 'a little over the top.' He hadn't expected for his group of friends to have the weirdest goddamn field trip ever, or to be able to lift a few tons over his head after that visit to their parents' work. He hadn't expected to patrol the streets of New York in an actual, real live superhero costume. Hell, he hadn't expected to fall for a dude before that dude checked out his own changes and practically pretzeled himself right in front of everyone. Puck's smile wavered as he looked at Kurt, who was still talking frantically to Finn. That day, when Santana had giggled over her fiery hand and Mike bounced off the walls, seemed impossibly long ago.

"I don't want to go to jail, Noah," Rachel said quietly. 

"That mindwipe'd be worse. We'd still have our families. They'd figure out what to do next. You can fix jail."

"I know."

He could feel that opinion running through everyone: they weren't happy about it, but they'd pick jail. In jail they'd still be themselves. Puck was strong, even without his powers; he could look out for them. Besides, they were kids. It wouldn't be _real_ jail, with three-hundred pound guys covered in scars and tattoos. He could keep his boy safe until they got things fixed. 

Okay. That was it. They were going to jail. Their parents would hear the news, they'd bring them home, and everything would work out just fine.

"Kids," Fury said with an abrupt reappearance. His voice was very solemn. "Have you made a decision?"

Though he tried to make sure he didn't sound like he was speaking for everyone, Puck repeated his earlier choice. "Jail. You can take away our powers, whatever. You can't take away who we are."

"You can't tell us we can never see our families again," Artie added. Everyone nodded.

Fury swallowed. He actually looked pained, which Puck hadn't expected. "I, ah. When I was called out just now, I heard some news."

"That you're going to set us all free?" Mike ventured.

Fury's mouth worked silently for a second, and then he took a deep breath and simply came out with it. "There was a secondary assault early this morning on another research facility. All personnel inside were killed. That facility was the one where all of your parents are... were employed."

"What?" Quinn asked after a long, silent moment. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying," Fury said with what seemed like genuine sympathy, "that all of your parents are dead."

"Like Batman?" Finn said blankly. His brain seemed to be slipping out of gear, but Kurt had processed Fury's words and one hand was over his mouth. His pale eyes swam with tears.

"Bullshit," Puck decided. Everyone looked at him. "You've been trying to convince us to do this brainwashing thing."

"He's right!" Santana said. "You've been on the whole 'memory wipe' kick like crazy, and we said we weren't going to give up our families."

"So you just convince us that we don't have any families left," Tina finished, smirking. "We've figured you out."

Fury looked regretfully at Finn. "Read my mind, kid. You'll see I'm telling the truth." Finn looked at him only to stagger back a moment later with tears streaming down his face. The truth hit Puck: his mom was dead. Finn had read it. His mom was gone. She was gone forever. He was distantly aware that everyone else was gasping for air like he was.

Fury held up a stack of files. "There are photographs if anyone wants to see the security footage." No one answered.

Their parents were dead, Puck thought numbly. His mom was dead. His _mom_ was _dead_ , and she'd been killed while he'd been off on some stupid plan to... to... he didn't even know what they'd been looking for. Had she called home? Could he have talked to her one more time? His mom wouldn't get him out of jail; she wouldn't even make soup again, or tell him to do his homework. Ever. 

How could a life fall apart so much in one night?

"I still need an answer," Fury said.

"You're a monster," Quinn whispered.

"I've heard that a lot, but whatever I have to do to keep people safe, I will do. I'm assuming you all don't want to die." The unspoken 'as well' earned some fresh sobs. "So... you get locked up or I make a call to a telepath at Xavier's. Which'll it be?"

Rachel cried against Puck's shoulder, but then her hands fisted around his shirt and her head whipped up. "We told you. Prison. We're not going to have our minds be wiped, our identities stolen...."

"You mean we could forget?" Mike asked in a plaintive voice, and everyone turned to look at him.

"Mike?" Mercedes asked disbelievingly. "You _want_ to...."

"Our parents are dead and we're about to be locked up for life," he said. His voice trembled. "We can't change that. But we can either be miserable forever in jail, or we can be happy."

"What if he's lying?" Tina demanded.

"He's not," Finn said. "Guys, I wish... I wish to _god_ he were, but he's not." 

"What would happen?" Brittany asked, looking up from the floor. "What would it be like?" Ignorance is bliss, Puck thought darkly. Of course Brittany would go for the mindwiping.

"You'll get new identities," Fury said shortly. "New homes, go to a new school... you'd be all together for monitoring, but you won't be friends. Not more than a couple here or there, anyway. Too much risk if you're all known as a group." He saw many of them start to shake their heads. "You don't have to. You can still take prison."

Puck wiped his eyes and hated that they were wet. His mom was _dead_ and his life and freedom were about to be ripped away from him in one way or another. Still, he didn't cry. He had to be strong. He didn't cry. "Do the mindwipe," he said dully. Kurt realized he'd directed that at him and looked startled. "I don’t want you locked up. Go be somewhere else, live that life."

"If he goes, I go," Finn said. Puck felt a stab of jealousy. He was going to lose his sister, who might never know what happened to them. Why'd those two luck out and have someone going through the same thing?

"I don't want to go to jail," Quinn murmured. "I don't."

Mercedes closed her eyes. Her cheeks glistened. "I don't want to forget them, but I don't want to hurt this bad. But I can't just forget my parents. That's so wrong."

"I just want to go home," Brittany whimpered against Santana's chest. Santana softly stroked her hair and promised her that everything would be okay, but she looked sick as she lied.

"...Okay, it's settled," Fury seemed to decide as he looked around the room. "I'll just make a call."

"We didn't decide anything," Puck said warily. "Not all of us."

"Close enough," Fury said and picked up the phone. "Yeah, it's what we talked about. The details are still the same; they're ready to go."

"Wait," Artie said. "Wait, I'm not ready. I... I have all these notes on my desk for—"

"You won't need those notes," Fury said. "As soon as the mindwipe hits, all active powers will be suppressed. You'll be on a flight for your new home."

"But what about the town?" Artie asked. "They'll know we don't belong!"

"The town'll be wiped, too. It'll be waiting for you." 

"I didn't say yes!" Puck cried as he felt the first tugging at his brain. He and Rachel stared at each other, and then lunged for the two boys who were still holding each other as anchors against their shared loss. "Goddammit, I didn't say yes!"

"Have a good life, kids," Colonel Fury told them as they clung to each other. Puck tried to remember: laughing as he and Finn smacked each other around after school. Asking out the cute girl from Temple, and instead turning into Rachel's bodyguard when dating didn't quite work out. Deciding that he just didn't give a fuck about what anyone thought, and feeling Kurt arch pliantly in his arms. He tried to remember, but it did no good. 

The world faded.


	2. Old Friends

On the last Thursday of the school year, Artie Abrams rolled into the choir room and nearly ran into a book with his face. "...Hello," he said as he managed to stop just in time. A small photo album with a cover of the Empire State Building retreated from his vision.

"Oh," Kurt said sheepishly. "You came in faster than I expected." He cleared his throat, grandly extended his hand again, and repeated, "Here."

Artie took the book and flipped through it. He'd seen some of these photos on Facebook, but others were new. "Cool. What's this?"

"I have a new photo printer, so I made a book for everyone," Kurt said as he walked with Artie over to his chosen spot. Sure enough, the people already in their seats were flipping through albums identical except for the cover images. "I like projects."

"He likes projects," Mercedes repeated with a slight smirk. "Bet you never could have guessed." 

Kurt smacked her on the arm. "I'm really not being treated fairly, considering all the work I put into those things."

"What, like typing in '12' to the printer?" Puck asked. "Harsh."

Kurt frowned at him, and then cleared his throat and said, "Well. Thirteen. I wanted my own copy." Their teacher joined them and his frown deepened. It vanished as he reached into his bag and picked out what was presumably his own copy of the album. "Here, Mr. Schue," he said almost convincingly. "I made this for you!"

As their teacher marveled over that record of their trip to New York for Nationals, Artie snickered at Kurt as he sat back down. Kurt shrugged, grinned, and mouthed that he still had his printer.

"God, my legs looked great in that dress," Santana said as she flipped through the pages. She glanced up and her expression changed in an instant. "Look who it is," she drawled. "The guys who lost us Nationals." Everyone turned to see Rachel and Finn walking in. They took in the mood waiting for them and slunk to their seats with shame. 

"Hey, now," Will said. He held up his hands. "I don't know if you've processed this, but two years ago this club didn't exist. And in just two competition seasons you made it to Nationals and beat dozens of the other best choirs in the country. That's not bad. That's fantastic."

"Would've been more fantastic if our fearless leaders had managed not to suck face on stage and drop us however many spots in the standings, but—"

Will raised his hands and Santana, annoyed, went back to her album. "Guys. Guys! There's next year. Don't argue. Be happy for how we did. We don't have to worry about the club being shut down, we just have to worry about doing even better. Remember: you're a team. Don't lose sight of that. You work together."

"Like the Justice League," Sam said with a huge grin. "Or the Thundercats."

"Please," Puck snorted. "We don't need to go all elementary school playground. Go for someone real. Like the Avengers. We're a team like the Avengers."

"Oh!" Kurt said excitedly and grabbed another book from his bag. "Flip to page, um... fifteen or so? With the long shot of Midtown. Look for it...." Everyone saw his target in unison and oohed and ahhed over the sight of Spider-Man swinging behind them. He was just a distant blur, and on that day he'd passed behind them without notice, but there was no mistaking who they were seeing. Artie grinned. It was one thing to drive past the old Avengers Mansion; it was another thing entirely to see an actual hero.

Kurt then tried to foist the book off on Finn. "I told you, give it to me at home," Finn grumbled as Kurt waved the album at him, but Kurt kept shoving until Finn gave up and took it.

After snickering at their comfortable dynamic, Artie settled in for their last, pressure-free practice. Lauren and Puck gave a bizarre performance of Shania's "Any Man of Mine," but if Puck was down with that, then Artie supposed he shouldn't question it. Rachel sang one of those big diva Broadway songs that all sounded the same to Artie. She sounded great on it, yeah; he just thought it sounded identically great to every other song she'd mastered. When Brittany pulled out "This is the Song That Never Ends" they all agreed it was time to call it a day, and split up for the last time that year.

"That song really never ends, you know," Brittany told him as they headed to the parking lot. "It's not like The NeverEnding Story."

"I hated that movie when I was little," Artie admitted as they approached his new van. It was a big step in his grand arc toward independence. "The part with the horse. It freaked me out." Brittany solemnly agreed, and for a while they talked about that creepy swamp as Artie fumbled for his keys. The lift on the side had just started to descend when he did a double take at someone hidden halfway behind a tree. "Wait, is that...?"

Brittany squinted, and then smiled and waved. "Matt! Hey, Matt! Come here!"

The man realized he'd been spotted, hesitated, and then stepped out from where he'd been standing. Artie saw that they were mistaken: the man there might be a doppelgänger for Matt Rutherford, but only if he'd advanced in age seven or eight years. Their departed classmate wasn't suddenly in his mid-twenties, obviously. "Sorry," the man said. "Who were you talking to?"

"I, uh." Artie blinked hard; the resemblance was eerie. "You just looked like someone I knew, sorry. Didn't mean to bother you."

He smiled. "No problem." Then he was gone.

A warm breeze came up and blew Artie's hair across his forehead. Brittany brushed away her bangs and cocked her head to the side. "That was weird."

"That was really weird," Artie agreed. Not only had he looked exactly like Matt, but... if he wasn't Matt, then why was some random old guy staring at their school? "I, uh, should drive you home," he eventually said. "Your car's being worked on. And I live close. So I'm being a good friend and driving you home."

Brittany looked away from where that not-Matt had been. "Yeah. Thanks for driving me, Artie. It's so weird how you can drive with your hands. I mean... most people drive with their hands. They use a steering wheel. But—"

"I've got it," he laughed and wheeled toward the lift. He looked one last time at that empty tree, and then shook his head and tried to refocus. What a weird start to the summer.

* * *

"See you tomorrow," Artie told Brittany as he dropped her off at her house. She hopped out and returned the farewell as he accelerated down the road. He'd just been able to fit in the detour and he didn't want to press his luck.

Two hours later he carefully edged his way out of his van and shot a dark look at the car next to him. Of course the handicap space markings were just _guidelines_ , he grumbled as he inched his way to freedom. It was that sort of thing, the reminder of how casually someone else could block his ability to live his life, that really annoyed him. It didn't feel like there was something wrong with him; he was a person with a handicap, not a handicapped person. Instead he felt like there was something wrong with a world that could make things hard for no reason.

He knew he shouldn't get his hopes up. He'd gone through the talks last year with Ms. Pillsbury. His life wouldn't be ruined if this didn't work, because it wasn't ruined now. He was simply a good candidate, healthy and young, and there were doctors at the Columbus hospital who were interested in this new stream of research. He was contributing to science. Science was neat. It was good to contribute. Artie had no expectations whatsoever; he was simply contributing.

His mom stood up from where she'd been resting against a bike rack. "Hey," she said and bent down to hug him. "Got a little worried."

Artie followed her through the sliding doors. "Sorry. Were you waiting long?"

"No, five or ten minutes. I just expected you to be here first."

"I gave Brittany a ride home." Artie hesitated before adding, "And we thought we saw a friend and tried to talk to him, but it was someone else." It was such an odd thing to say. Who would care about such an encounter more than thirty seconds after it passed? And yet he'd turned over the sight of not-Matt's face in his head all the way to Columbus.

"Well, we're still a few minutes early," she said as they proceeded down the hall toward the clinic they'd visited once before. The university's grant demanded they start their research period before the end of Artie's school year, and so he'd already had to make one drive in before Nationals to get poked, prodded, and assessed. They agreed that he was a great candidate, asked if he could come back starting in May, and they would begin the full regimen of treatments over the summer. 

He agreed, of course. Whether or not it returned even the slightest bit of sensation, the idea that someone's paralysis had been reversed was simply fascinating. Electrical impulses applied to the spine of a man in Kentucky had stimulated his nerves, and now someone who'd used to be in a wheelchair was walking on a treadmill. If nothing else, Artie was interested in the process.

They greeted the receptionist and waited patiently in the small lobby. It was for research patients, not the general populace, and so they didn't provide the typical niceties. Artie picked up a magazine off the table and realized it was a dense medical journal. He tried to read through an article, soon gave up, and put it back. Hearing that his mother was asking him something, Artie focused and managed to give an answer for his summer plans. "Just hanging out with friends, that sort of stuff."

"You should read those books your Uncle Gary sent," she decided.

"His old accounting textbooks?" Artie asked dubiously. "No matter how many times you say it, I don't want to be an accountant."

"They make good money," she said for the hundredth time, but let it rest. He was suddenly glad they'd driven separate cars. Otherwise, he'd get to hear all about the amazing world of CPAs the entire way back to Lima.

"Abrams?" the receptionist called. "You can go on back."

He nodded and rolled toward the lab he'd visited for his evaluation. This would be the first session with any electricity involved, and so in theory he should be concerned about people shocking him right near his brain or his pelvis. (Both were very, _very_ important places.) Instead, he was simply excited. He had the distinct feeling that he was on the edge of something big.

After changing into the unflattering hospital garments, Artie was helped onto a high exam table. His arms pillowed his head as they prodded his back and then attached electrodes up and down his spine. He nodded occasionally at the small talk they tried to make. The weather was nice. Sure, baseball season was always fun. Yeah, they should definitely test more for mutants in the majors, after those two players had made it onto the Padres. It wasn't fair to the other guys. At least the ones who stayed off steroids, the doctor added with a chuckle, and asked everyone to stay back. "Okay, Artie. We're going to start at the base of your spine. You probably won't feel anything, but let us know if you do, okay?" Artie nodded and waited, but had to be told when they were done. He hadn't felt a thing.

The impulses crawled slowly up his back, and Artie could soon feel his muscles spasm as each new electrode activated. It was very cool and very definitely weird, but was low-voltage and so he didn't have anything to be concerned about.

At least, he didn't have anything to be concerned about before the top electrode fired, something in his neck felt like it was on fire, and feedback to the machines cut them out. The room lights flickered. Artie clutched his neck and nearly threw himself off the table; it was simple luck that he didn't. The pain, though intense, was short-lived. Everyone was flustered and obviously confused, and even the doctors looked scared.

"What the hell was that?" demanded Artie's mother when she'd caught her breath. "Artie, honey, are you okay?"

"Yeah," he said, wincing a bit, but only from the memory. "Yeah, I'm fine. That was weird, but it's over."

"I have no idea what happened," the doctors said. "It was like something shorted out, but we took X-rays and of course there was nothing on the films. Nothing should be in his neck, anyway, and...."

His mother looked beyond unimpressed as she grabbed Artie's clothes. The doctors realized she was about to pull him from the program and immediately started working on convincing her otherwise, making every argument from advancing science to Artie's own future. In the commotion, Artie felt ignored. It gave him plenty of time to prod the side of his neck and wonder why it felt like something had responded to the electricity from _inside_ his body. 

"I don't know what you people are doing here," his mother said as she apparently made the final decision to pull Artie from the university's tests, "but I'm not going to let you risk my son as part of it. Come on, Artie. Are you okay to drive, or do you need me to...?"

"I'm fine, geez," he said as she helped him off the table and back into his chair. "Eyes focused, pupils non-dilated... I mean, I assume." She instantly bent over to check and only stood after she'd actually pulled up his eyebrows, like that would open up his eyes that much more. Artie had a moment of flashing back to the earliest days in Glee. He and Kurt had laughingly bonded over the strict curfews and rules of overprotective parents. 

"You're sure you're okay? I'll follow behind you, and if you feel dizzy at all then just pull over to the side and I can take you. Got it?"

"Got it, Mom," he promised as he clasped her hands. "I'm good. Let's go home."

Artie made it home without issue, with unexpected free time before him. Some of that time was eaten up with more parental fretting, but he eventually chased them out, closed the door, and sighed heavily. He really, truly and honestly hadn't gotten his hopes up over the program's prospects. Still, being pulled out of it meant a big fat failure. Even if no real hopes had been dashed, that still sucked.

He rubbed his neck again, scratched it, and then let himself wonder on just what had happened. Between not-Matt and the short circuit, it was a beyond-bizarre day with tons of questions and no explanations. "They X-rayed me before we started," he mused. "And they didn't see anything." He could believe that they'd accidentally left something left in him from his old childhood surgeries, but it would have to be tiny or some sort of weird, high-tech plastic to be invisible to X-rays. Or both. 

Something tickled at the back of his mind. Grinning to himself, and knowing he was being an idiot, Artie wheeled to his closet and leaned forward as far as he could go. There in the back was an old metal detector he'd gotten as a kid. He hadn't used it for years and probably hadn't even thought about it since freshman year. It was like his brain had just randomly decided, "Hey, Artie, what do you have in this room that could kinda-sorta mimic an X-ray? Go look in your closet!" Memory was a strange thing.

He took the detector over to his desk, pried open the base, and lifted free the actual device inside the disc. No need to have such a tiny thing inside that big container; it just made it harder to work with. He grabbed whatever seemed logical for a next step: part of his television remote, a paper clip, three thumbtacks. "I have no idea what I'm doing," Artie laughed to himself. He did know, though. It was another bit of weirdness on the top of that bizarre day. He knew that he had to connect those two wires, add in a circuit there, and jury-rig a power source. And he knew _how_ to do it all.

The makeshift scanner beeped placidly at him when he ran it over his neck. Whatever was in there was still setting things off. He considered that, played around with his toy a little more, and checked again. Its beep was low and steady. When he held it up to a working piece of equipment—his digital watch—it beeped more intently. He somehow knew that whatever was inside him had been knocked out of commission for good.

"Wait," Artie asked himself as he stared at the out-of-nowhere invention in his hand. "What just happened?"

* * *

"Hey," Tina said when she saw him in the halls on their blessed final morning of the year. "How'd it go?"

She looked so hopeful that it broke Artie's heart a little to tell her what had taken place: the short circuit, being pulled from the program, heading home with nothing to show for two long drives over to Columbus. "And the weird thing is, I swear there's something really in there," Artie added as he held up his strange little jury-rigged scanner.

Tina raised an eyebrow at his invention. "Um. That's... something."

He moved it over his neck to demonstrate that low-level beeping. "See? It's there inside me, but it's turned off. Bend over a little, so I can show you how it'd sound if there wasn't anything to react to." He ran the scanner over her neck and jerked back when it emitted a high-pitched whine. "Or... it could think that something's in your neck, too."

"I think school's fried your brain," she said as she gathered all her books from her locker. The day of textbook check-in was upon them.

"No," Artie mumbled as he fiddled with his toy. "Just my weird neck dealie." After considering that he'd used a TV remote as part of its construction, he tried pointing it at Tina and hitting 'off.' 

She jerked, clapped a hand to her neck, and shot him a disbelieving look. Her books nearly fell from her grasp. "Artie! What did you just do to me?"

"I'm not sure," Artie nearly giggled. He had no idea what he'd made or how he'd made it, but a remote-controlled friend-zapper was kind of hilarious. He closed his locker and started rolling down the hallway. Mercedes and Kurt were just around the corner; both yelped. Artie rolled on before they noticed him. Rachel just barely caught his departure and looked confused as she rubbed at her neck.

Nothing for Lauren, but that momentary failure didn't bother him. Santana, Quinn, and Brittany all jerked like they'd been hit with a cattle prod, and Santana dropped an iced coffee all over the floor. Artie choked back his laughter and hurried away. The people in the hallway around Santana clapped sarcastically; she flipped everyone off and shouted for a custodian.

Jacob, nada. Too bad, as Artie would have really enjoyed watching him squirm. The jerk components of the football and hockey teams were no better; they simply laughed and pointed at Artie's device when he tried to use it on them. He rounded another corner and came upon Finn, Mike, Puck, and Sam talking together. The first three shouted in unison and nearly doubled over when Artie clicked 'off.' Sam looked bewildered at their sudden, unified freak-out. "You guys okay?" he asked hesitantly.

"What the hell was that?" Puck wondered as he rubbed at his neck. Artie instantly threw the remote in his bag and whistled. That only drew Puck's attention, and with a distrustful expression he walked over and asked, "Artie, did you do something to us?"

"Um. Why would you ask?"

"Because you're whistling and trying really hard to not look suspicious."

"Oh," Artie said. Subterfuge was apparently not among his many talents. "I got that first zapping treatment yesterday," he settled on. "I developed super powers after exposure. Lightning Man! I'm like Thor without the goofy hair." He wiggled his fingers at Puck, who rolled his eyes and returned to his books.

He moved on, pointing at nearly everyone he saw, but never got another reaction like the ten from his friends. A loud crash behind him made Artie stop, turn, and gawk at the sight of Puck in front of his locker. He was staring at the metal wall with obvious confusion. It sounded like he'd slammed a dozen lockers at once, and the metal door looked very slightly dented.

"Wow," Sam said blankly as he traced his fingertips over that curve in the metal.

"Looking forward to summer break?" Finn laughed at Puck as the boy continued to look bewildered at the locker in front of him. It had been a very final gesture indeed.

"I just closed it," Puck said. "Guess my hand slipped."

"Come on!" Mike said. "Last day of school!" He started backing down the hallway and leapt up to click his heels together. Even for Mike, it was an impressive display.

Artie shook his head and headed for class. He couldn't wait to get rid of his textbooks, get through the last boring day of school, and find something far more exciting to do with his life.


	3. A Traditional French Dessert

"Summer vacation only means a vacation from classes, boys," Shannon Beiste said loudly as she raised her whistle to her mouth. "Not a break from practice. Run a mile, and if I like your time then I might not make you run a second." The whistle blared.

Finn set off jogging. He wasn't going to complain. Thanks to her leadership, an athletic scholarship might be in his future when it had been utterly impossible during the era of Tanaka. Of course, part of why Tanaka had been a terrible coach was that he was such a pushover. They'd only met for two practices a week during summer break; Beiste demanded twice as many, and longer. They didn't even get to head immediately home once they'd been set free from the school year. She said she wanted to "remind them of their priorities." They'd already had to show up on Wednesday to express interest in the team next year, which meant running wind sprints and doing push-ups.

"Next year's gonna be awesome," Finn said to Puck as they set a steady pace down the track. Puck grunted agreement. He saw a familiar shock of blond hair and grinned. "Hey, Evans! So you get to be on the team again?”

Sam grinned back and shrugged. "Coach and I talked. We're gonna try to work something out." Varsity football wasn't cheap for the players. It was only when Finn had heard rumors that Sam might not be able to play at all that he realized how much his own mother had sacrificed over the years to put him through his chosen activities. 

"Cool," Finn said. 

Sam nodded, but then frowned at something up ahead of them. "Uh, okay. Someone's taking her threat pretty seriously."

The trio looked to see Mike already a hundred feet ahead of their group, and they were at the head of all the other players. Even as Sam said there was no way to maintain this speed and that they should take it down a notch, some sort of competitive instinct seemed to flare within Puck. He sped, caught up to Mike, and matched him step for step. Finn decided to stay back with Sam; those guys were running like crazy. They'd exhaust themselves.

The two looked fine when they finished, though. Coach Beiste's eyebrows raised appreciatively as she checked her stopwatch. "Not bad at all, Chang, Puckerman. Might have to push you a little more and see what you're made of. Looks like you've been holding back. The rest of you... not so good. But these two made up for it. Let's move on."

"You heard the lady!" Finn said loudly and clapped his hands together. "D-line, head to the far end of the field for some backpedal drills! Offense, grab gloves, we're doing punches and machine guns." He turned and looked expectantly at their coach. 

She was surprised and took a second to say, "You heard him! Go!" As the other players moved to where Finn had instructed, she called out, "Hey, Hudson! Good to see you paying attention last year. That's just what I would have picked."

Finn hesitated before he smiled awkwardly back and went to join his teammates on the field. She _had_ picked those; he'd heard what she'd told them and had just repeated it as the captain. Weird. Maybe the sun was getting to her.

He was exhausted by the time he left, but it was a good workout. He was on top of his game. He was threading his passes where no one expected, guiding people fluidly in scrimmages, and picking the perfect play every time. It was amazing what one year under a good coach could do, Finn thought happily as he rubbed a towel across his hair and got dressed. About the only downside was that Artie had bailed on them without warning, but Finn wasn't too surprised. He probably wasn't worried about getting abs for Tina next year, and so he'd have more important things to worry about. Like that nerdy quiz team or whatever.

Finn tapped along with the radio all the way home. He really did feel great. The end of the school year had apparently shot a hundred watts of energy straight through him. He was going to get so much done that summer: practice, hanging out with friends, working at the garage for _way_ more money than other people's summer jobs....

(Sure, yeah, he'd been told he wasn't allowed to touch anything there until Kurt gave him the explicit "okay," but he was still getting paid during training.)

It was going to be a good summer. Finn hopped out of his truck and clicked the garage door closer. He then set off running down the driveway, ducked under the descending door, and pretended for a triumphant moment that he was Indiana Jones as he walked into the house. "Hey, I'm home!"

"Carole's upstairs taking a nap, she had a headache," he heard from the dining room. "And it's summer season at the garage, remember."

Finn nodded. Right; Burt had said that things picked up when people needed to make sure their SUVs and trucks were ready to pull trailers. It was why he wasn't supposed to actually start working there for a few weeks. He needed the safety net of a slower pace. 

Though he considered just heading to his room, Finn had the vague idea that it'd be rude. Besides, he was hungry and dinner wouldn't be for at least an hour. He swung through the dining room toward the kitchen and saw Kurt busily checking things off in a notepad. "Is that the play you're working on about Pippin?"

"Pippa," Kurt corrected, but his initial irritation faded. "I'd be distraught at you not remembering such an icon's name, but I instead choose to take it as a sign that my lessons on the history of Broadway are sinking in. Half a success."

"Right," Finn agreed so he could get out of that conversation and jammed his head into the fridge. He rummaged through his options, wondered at what point diet pop had become a thing that was bought on purpose, and emerged with sandwich ingredients. "You want one?" he asked as he held up his bounty.

"No thanks. I need to keep my hands clean." That answer made Finn really consider what Kurt was doing: sorting through a fresh set of pictures to fill another New York album. Oh, right; he'd forgotten to make one for Mr. Schue and had given their teacher his. 

"So, what cover did you get?" Finn asked as he slathered mayo on his bread. (It was wheat rather than white, but it turned out that he didn't mind much. Diet pop was still just wrong, though.) He remembered Kurt very carefully sorting through the box of mini albums he'd picked up and reserving one of Times Square for himself. There were Broadway signs on it, apparently.

"I got...." Kurt began as he leaned over, retrieved the last album from the box, and stared unhappily at it. "Yankee Stadium."

Finn smirked. "Want to trade me for Central Park?"

"A thousand times yes," Kurt instantly said. "I'll put this one together perfectly for you, don't worry." Finn didn't worry, of course; they'd just been in New York. It wasn't like he was going to forget the trip if Kurt didn't get this album made for him right that second.

"It's so weird," Kurt murmured as he stared at the photographs spread in front of him. "I'm getting the strangest feeling of deja vu when I look at these pictures."

"That's the one that means...."

"That I've been there before." He plucked a photograph of Washington Square Park off the table, stared at it, and sighed.

"Well, you _have_ been there," Finn pointed out. "You were there when you took the picture. That's how you were able to put together these albums." Unless he was missing something really obvious, it was pretty easy to figure out what Kurt must be remembering.

"That's not what I meant," Kurt grumbled, but then shook his head and put the picture back on the table. "I've always obsessed about New York. It probably just felt like I've 'been there' a thousand times before we ever set foot in the state for Nationals. That must be it." His efforts to convince himself didn't sound very successful. Finn focused again on his sandwich as Kurt mumbled something about how he'd given the two Times Square albums to himself and Rachel on purpose.

"Geez, just go buy a second set to get another cover like that," Finn said with a roll of his eyes. 

"Did I say that out loud?" Kurt asked. When Finn looked up he saw that Kurt was blushing faintly.

Finn smirked and continued piling on cold cuts. If dinner was going to be late because his mom had a headache, he'd better add a few more slices. As he did, Kurt kept complaining. "That cover was just so perfect," he said in several muttered variations. "Even if it didn't show the Gershwin, it at least had a billboard for the show." Then he continued grumbling something as Finn, unfortunately, decided to take a long drink.

That juice promptly headed up Finn's nose. He coughed, sputtered, and wiped at himself as Kurt asked if he was okay and made a motion toward the paper towels. "You broke into a building?" Finn demanded in disbelief. He knew the two of them had taken off, but they'd _broken in_ to a building?

The scant color in Kurt's cheeks fell entirely away. "What?"

"You broke into a theatre?" Finn asked. "You broke into a huge building in the middle of New York and got _caught?_ Holy shit, dude, you could have been arrested!"

"I didn't say that," Kurt gulped. "I am very careful to not say that in this house where anyone could hear. Ever." _What's going on?_

"I don't know what's going on!" Finn immediately replied, only to freeze at the terrified expression on Kurt's face. "You didn't say that out loud. Your mouth. It didn't move."

"Oh no," Kurt said after a moment of horrible realization. "Oh no. This is... this is not good. This could be so very, very not good at all. Finn, this could be bad."

"Yeah, I've got that!" Finn yelped. Kurt lunged forward, covered his mouth with his hand, and pointed upstairs with a finger. His shushing noise earned a frantic nod from Finn, and satisfied, he removed his hand. "Um. Oh god. Okay. Think of something I would never, ever guess."

Kurt bit at his lip, looked to the side for a second, and nodded.

"What's a... croquembouche?" Finn asked awkwardly, but had no sooner formed the unfamiliar word than he nearly knocked over a chair in his attempts to lurch away. "Oh my god."

"Oh my god," Kurt repeated.

"I just read your mind."

"You just read my mind."

Finn tried not to pass out. "Does this mean I'm a mutant? Will I be dangerous? Will I have to go to that school with all the other mutants?" His breath caught. "Will I grow scales or something?"

"You're going to be fine, just calm down," Kurt said intently. "If our parents find you completely freaking out then yes, bad things may happen, so stay quiet."

He nodded in short jerks, but then Finn couldn't hold back his nervous questions. It was too easy to picture himself with some physical marker that was impossible to hide: glowing eyes, bigass wings, blue fur. He'd seen the X-Men. He knew how they rolled. "Will I grow a tail? Some of them have tails. What if it's already coming in? Will you check?"

"I'm not going to look to see if you have a _tail_ , Finn!" Kurt said disbelievingly. When Finn kept insisting on it he grabbed Finn's hand and slammed it against the boy's waistband. "There. Feel."

"Oh," Finn said sheepishly as he felt his tailbone and the smooth skin covering it. "Guess I could have just checked for myself."

"This is fine," Kurt decided as he began to pace a short circuit around Finn. "Maybe you're not a mutant." That would be really good, Finn thought. It was okay if people could point to where you got freaky powers: radiation, genetic testing, magic. Explanations made things okay. Everyone panicked if they just came out of nowhere, though. "Have you... snuck into any government labs recently?"

Finn looked flatly at Kurt.

"I'm trying to be helpful," Kurt hissed. "Because I don't know if you've noticed, but yes, mutants tend to look... mutant-y. So it would be very good for your sake if there's some other explanation!"

"Not all of them do, though," Finn said weakly. "That girl who walks through walls doesn't. She looks normal."

"Your taste for tiny Jewish brunettes is duly noted." Kurt hesitated, pulled back, and asked, "So, are you hearing my thoughts right now?"

He'd stopped in his panic, but now it was like someone pointing out the feeling of his clothes against his skin. Once made aware of it, Finn couldn't stop thinking about the sensation. Kurt's previously ignored thoughts filled his mind. They swirled like a storm, almost impossible to read, except for one: _What if he does change? What'll happen to him?_

It was harder to pretend that he might not be one of those hated mutants when he was hearing the possibility straight out of a person's head. "You know it might happen," Finn said in a tiny, scared voice. "You know I might turn into a freak. Oh god, I can't... I can't. I can't!"

"You probably would have changed by now," Kurt said reassuringly. "You hear about it happening younger, right? Maybe your powers just took longer to show because, um." _Because they're mental powers and it might have been like beating down a brick wall._

Finn jerked back with tears in his eyes. Kurt flinched when he realized he'd been heard. "I'm sorry. I'm not used to this. At all. Don't worry, okay? Carole will still love you the same as she ever has. And Dad... he did really good when I came out," Kurt suggested with false cheer. "This is sort of like that. Vaguely. If you squint."

This was like _coming out_? He wasn't ready for this. He wasn't ready to suddenly be on the world's most-hated list, to be faced with a list of what was acceptable that didn't include him, and to possibly grow horns. (That last one was probably what made it different from coming out.) "I can't tell them yet," Finn whispered. "I'm too scared."

"Okay," Kurt said slowly. "That's okay. We'll just deal until you are. If you ever are. No pressure." He began to pace again, but stopped mid-stride to eye Finn in curiosity. "Are you...?"

"Humming 'Born This Way,'" Finn agreed. Well, he had to do something to keep his mind off things. Wow, would his shirt ever look different if they'd done that assignment after this little discovery. 'Mutie Freak.' It'd be memorable, that was for sure.

"I'm not one to question the application of pop music toward an emotional crisis. I'm just surprised that _you_ would go for it," Kurt said and tried to laugh. That faded and he leaned in to say with quiet intensity, "It'll be okay. We'll figure out what you can do next and it'll just... it'll be okay. I promise."

Kurt couldn't promise anything, but Finn really just wanted to hear that his life wasn't over. He accepted the lie and nodded. "Thanks." But then his phone rang and he closed his eyes. "I can't. I can't talk to anyone right now, I just...."

Thankfully Kurt scooped it out of Finn's bag, checked the number on the front, and groaned and answered the call. "Puck, look, now's not a good time." He paused. "What?" He swallowed hard enough for Finn to see. "Did anyone notice? Are you sure?" He held up his hand when Finn mouthed 'what?' and focused on the phone. "I don't... I don't think Finn's feeling very well, but I'll come over." He shrugged as he said it, like he couldn't believe he was apparently serving as Noah Puckerman's white knight. "Yeah, right away. What's your address? Go inside and wait for me, I'll be right there."

"You're _leaving_?" Finn asked with a sense of absolute betrayal. 

"Puck just—" Kurt cut himself off, took a deep breath, and said almost too softly to hear, "Puck just ripped a tree in half."

Finn's eyes went wide as the implications hit. "I'm coming with you."

Kurt didn't argue and they bolted for the garage. Lady Gaga filled Finn's mind. It took him almost a full cycle of the song to realize he was hearing Kurt's thoughts, not his own; Finn had gotten the song stuck in his head.

"Turn on some music," Finn suggested when the song started up again.

Like he knew, Kurt glanced at Finn out of the corner of his eye, nodded, and flicked it on to FM radio. It drowned out Gaga, but not the thought that replaced her in Kurt's mind:

_What's happening to them?_

* * *

Puck didn't answer when they rang the doorbell. Finn reached up, felt over the bricks outlining the door, and plucked free the key he knew the Puckermans kept there for emergencies. "Puck?" he asked carefully as he let them inside. "You okay, man?"

"So this is Puck's house," Kurt said as he edged through the door. "My first visit. What a banner day. Puck? Hello?"

"In here," they heard from the living room. Puck was sitting on the couch with his hands resting on his knees. He stared at them like they belonged to someone else. "She made me promise that if she brought home a good tire, that I'd turn it into a swing," Puck said blankly. "We had a big tree branch out back that could hold her."

"Little sister," Finn explained when he felt Kurt's confusion. His stomach twisted when he realized he'd _felt_ it, not _seen_ it, and he immediately tried to think about anything else.

Puck's hand moved in loose circles as he gestured at the back yard. "I said yes, because how is she going to bring home a tire? She doesn't have a car. Her bike has a tiny basket. And then she rolls one up the driveway today, says she's going to her friend's house, and she wants her swing when she gets back." Puck swallowed. Now his gaze was focused somewhere far away. "So I threw the rope over the branch and I just... tugged a little to see how much give it had. It was just a little. I swear."

Both visitors followed his pointing finger and walked down a hall to peer through the back window. A massive branch lay on the grass. Its jagged end was still yellow and fresh; it hadn't been exposed to the elements for long.

"It could have been rotten inside," Kurt said carefully when they returned. And while that was true and logical, the way he kept glancing at Finn revealed how worried he was about whatever was going on with the two boys. Finn didn't even have to read his mind to know that. "A rotten branch would be easy for anyone to pull down."

"It's not. It's solid all the way through." Puck swallowed again. His Adam's apple bobbed convulsively. "It's like when I dented my locker today. Remember that, Finn?"

Finn closed his eyes, tried to get rid of that memory, but had to admit, "Yeah. He just closed his locker and it dented."

"Shoddy public school construction?" Kurt supplied.

"And then I was freaked out, so I wanted to test. I picked up my bed with one hand," Puck continued and Kurt gave up.

"Okay. So... you have superpowers. Superpowers that just showed up today."

"Like mine," Finn admitted before he meant to, and shrank at Puck's wild-eyed stare. "Um, yeah. I can read people's thoughts. I guess." Puck opened and closed his mouth and then, despite his earlier panic, seemed almost amused. "Shut up, me having brain powers is not funny!" Finn snapped. "You and Kurt are both jerks." He realized he'd heard Puck's thoughts, dropped his head into his hands, and groaned. It would be terrific if he could stop reminding himself of his status as a card-carrying freak.

"So you both had powers just come out of nowhere. Powers that you presumably do not want to call in to the newspapers and report, but could cause a lot of trouble. You both... you... why did you call me instead of your girlfriend, Puck?" Kurt almost whined. "Seriously, do you know how much I've had to deal with today?" Finn shot him a dark look; yeah, _Kurt_ was the one who'd had a lot to deal with.

"I didn't," Puck said. "I called Finn. You jacked his phone."

"Fine. Whatever." Kurt rubbed his temples. "I can't believe I'm talking to two varsity football players about their superpowers; my life has gotten so weird in just a couple of years." His head whipped up and his eyes were wide. "Football players. You're both football players and you had practices this week after focusing on basketball season for months."

"Yeah, and?" Finn asked warily.

"Maybe... maybe Coach Beiste slipped something into your vitamin supplements. Your Gatorade. Your whatever."

Finn and Puck stared blankly at Kurt, but the gears were turning. "You think Coach Beiste did this to us?" Puck asked. "Seriously?"

"Well, it's a possibility!" Kurt began a fresh round of pacing. "She's known for turning teams around out of nowhere, she'd want strong players, and, well...." He trailed off and gestured at Puck. 

"That makes sense," Puck agreed and nodded at Finn. "I'd totally kick ass on the field like this. Or knock someone's ass right off them. Can you do that? There'd probably be a penalty," he mused.

Finn decided that Puck was deliberately distracting himself from the danger of their situation. That was sort of insightful. But had he guessed it, or did he _know_ what Puck was thinking? Frowning, Finn asked, "But then why am I all...?" he asked as he gestured at the side of his head. 

Kurt seemed stymied for a second, and then smiled proudly and answered, "You're the quarterback! You need to guide your team on the field and anticipate the other team's moves. It all fits together."

"Mike was out ahead of everyone when we were running," Finn remembered and Puck agreed solemnly. "It's true! She gave us superpowers! That's so wrong!"

“You know, now that it’s not just me ruining stuff on accident… it’s actually kind of cool," Puck said as he folded his arms across his chest. His gaze meandered down to those arms and he started flexing his biceps.

"The entire football team being superpowered is pretty much my worst nightmare come to life, but let's take this one step at a time," Kurt said. "You said Mike showed something? Let's go talk to him." He firmly escorted them both out—Puck first scribbled a note to his sister about how the branch wasn't safe and so he hadn't made her swing—and led them to his car. "Wait!" he said when Puck reached for the handle. Kurt leaned forward, opened the door, and gestured Puck inside. 

"Thanks?" Puck said sarcastically.

"If you're bending locker doors and ripping trees apart on accident, I don't want you mangling my baby," Kurt said. "Get in, but don't touch the seat belt. I'll do it."

"You'll 'do it?'" Puck repeated. He froze for a second when he realized Kurt was strapping him in to his seat and pulling the belt low and tight across his lap, but then relaxed and grinned. "So. Is this a turn-on?"

Kurt shuddered delicately.

"Me, being all big and strong and hot? Like Captain America or something?" Puck added as his grin slid into a full-on smirk. "Hell, I'd be kind of turned on. You must be going crazy."

"Noah Puckerman is flirting with me: my life is complete. Well, it's good to see that your heteronormativity dial has been turned down from eleven," Kurt said. "Now stay quiet, I need to think. Since I have somehow wound up as the caretaker for this... zoo."

Finn shot Kurt another wounded look as Kurt took the driver's seat. When he saw it, Kurt groaned, rested his head against the wheel, and jerked back up as a short honk blared. "Sorry. Hopefully Carole didn't use all of the aspirin," Kurt muttered as they backed out of the driveway and shot down the road. "Tell me how to get to Mike's?"

"Do you think we need costumes or something?" Puck mused to Finn, who turned in his seat to gawk at him.

"Directions! Mike!"

Finn told Kurt where to drive, then refocused on Puck. "What? We are not doing anything with this until we know what's going on! People will panic, we'll be all over the news, government guys might want to talk to us...."

"So we'll use masks," Puck said. "Oh, come on, you can't expect us to do _nothing_ with what happened! Yeah, I freaked at first when I ripped crap apart without meaning to, but a whole bunch of us all being superheroes? That kicks ass!”

"If the football team suddenly starts running _through_ members of opposing teams, then the news might figure it out anyway," Kurt noted as he took a turn a little faster than was safe. Finn's hand clutched the door handle until they steadied. "But Finn's right, Puck. Until we know more about what's going on, it's important to not... draw... attention." Kurt trailed off. Finn looked over and saw him frowning in thought.

"Kurt?"

The car turned again without warning. Kurt ignored their protests that he was headed in the wrong way from Mike's, and Finn soon heard why: there were sirens in the distance. A lot of sirens, and Kurt was driving toward them. He and Puck shared a nervous glance. They had no reason to think sirens meant anything even remotely related to them, but it was a strange day and there were at least three distinct sounds ahead. There weren't many events in Lima that called for three emergency vehicles, if not more.

They came to a halt down a few houses from the fire truck. It looked like they'd caught the blaze just in time. Streaks of smoke damage were above two windows, but there was nothing more. The police car and ambulance seemed to be there as precautions rather than required backup. "Do you recognize the place?" Kurt asked, as he clearly didn't.

Sounding like he wished he could give any other answer, Puck said, "Yeah." He unfastened his seat belt, leaned forward between the other two boys, and pointed at a cluster of people standing on the sidewalk. Finn saw who he meant, almost hidden by her father as she stood there in shock: Santana. "You think she's okay?"

All the boys went silent as Santana looked down at her hand, back up to the smoke damage, and then shook where she stood. "She did it," Finn said softly as the words ran through his mind. "She doesn't know how, but she did it."

"I think it might not just be the football team," Kurt said weakly.

Puck clapped him on the shoulder. "Good going, genius."

"Ow."


	4. Helen Hayes

All she'd been doing was a quick stir-fry, Santana thought as she watched the firefighters save her house. She'd made the dish dozens of times. She could do it on autopilot. She _had_ done it on autopilot; she'd let her mind wander in favor of her plans for the summer and for her life. Until the kitchen caught fire around her in a sudden explosion, she'd barely paid attention to her food.

"It's those gas burners," she heard her mom say yet again. She'd never trusted the gas line going into the kitchen. She wanted electric; she said it was safer.

"It wasn't the stove!" her dad replied. "You keep harping on that thing. You never wanted me to get it."

"Just because you watch Top Chef, you think we have to go buy a 'professional stovetop'...."

Santana was silently grateful that they weren't blaming her. Even if it was her fault, she had no idea what she'd done or how to explain it.

"Santana."

She jumped at the unexpected voice not a foot away from her ear. "Jesus Christ," she said. She could feel her heart racing in her chest. "Where did you come from?"

Kurt blinked at her. "My car, right over there," he said and gestured toward the hulking figure parked across the road. She could just make out a couple of figures within it. That wasn't what she meant; he'd snuck up out of absolute nowhere and surprised her, but Santana didn't care enough to argue. Kurt looked both ways, dropped his voice low, and whispered, "We know what happened."

She sucked in a breath and hoped no one was paying attention to them. "What do you mean, 'you know?'"

Kurt looked around cautiously again before leaning in close enough that she could feel his breath on her ear. Normally she would have shoved him away, but at that moment she wanted to know what he would say. "Puck ripped a tree in half. Finn reads minds. We know you accidentally caused the fire."

Santana jerked back and felt her heart speed again. He held up a finger to his lips, which should have been a dead giveaway to the people around them that something major was happening, but everyone ignored their discussion. She swallowed, forced her breathing to steady, and leaned back in. "What?"

"We don't know why it's happening, but we know it _is_ happening." He shook his head when she gestured at him. "No, nothing for me. They just asked me to come get you, because your dad would recognize Puck and Finn is kind of awful at any sort of stealth."

"Come get me?" Santana repeated. "Um, my house just caught on fire."

"So you probably don't want to stay there tonight," Kurt countered softly, "and instead want to talk to all the other people trying to figure out what's going on?"

Damn. That made sense. If this was really happening to the others then she did want to talk to them, and her house was all smoky and wet and gross. "Dad," Santana said at full volume, and the man paid her some real attention. "My, um... friend?" Kurt looked amused. Oh, like he'd never used creative vocabulary around parents. "He heard the sirens and swung by, and he thought I could stay with him tonight while the insurance people look things over."

"He?" her father repeated, but any reluctance faded when he actually turned to look at Kurt. The boy had on a typically flamboyant jacket of suede, embroidery, and buckles, and somehow managed to wear it in May without dying of heat stroke. "Ah," he finished dryly and seemed to decide that nothing untoward would possibly happen with _that_ boy. Santana held back her eyeroll. _Yeah, Daddy; if you only knew._ "And you are?"

"Kurt Hummel," Kurt said and extended his hand. "We have a guest room she could stay in tonight. I'm in Glee with her and would love to help out."

_Pile it on a little thicker, Hummel,_ Santana groused as she was placed in his oh-so-caring hands. She was then herded toward his car and away from her parents' concern. "Spill," she said once they were away from the crowd.

"Like I said," Kurt replied as he opened the door for her and gestured at Puck inside. "Ripped apart a tree."

"Hey," Puck said with a loose wave.

"Reads people's minds," Kurt continued as he pointed toward the shotgun seat.

"Me having brain powers is not funny, and I'm getting sick of people thinking that it is," Finn snapped. Santana tried to fight back a smirk. A quick glance toward her burnt house did wonders for dampening her mood, and she climbed in next to Puck with a solemn expression.

"Where to now?" Finn asked as they set into motion.

"Hello?" Santana said when the boys started talking about Mike. "Still wanting answers here. What's going on?"

"There seems to be a rash of superpowers popping up among the members of New Directions," Kurt replied. "We used to have a hypothesis that it had to do with Coach Beiste exposing her players to chemical enhancers, but, um, now you might all be mutants again."

Finn made a pained noise.

"Mutants?" Santana demanded. "To hell with that! I am not a mutant! I'm not going to grow... blue fur! Or a tail!"

Finn's noises continued and he gestured back at her like she'd proven a point.

Puck gawked at everyone inside the car, but then directed his question to Kurt. "Wait. Those are possibilities?"

"Why am I in charge?" Kurt asked plaintively. "Okay, while we're driving to Mike's, tell me everything that happened to you today." He cut Finn off at the first mention of toast. "Correction: tell me everything _strange_ that happened to you today."

"Like when I bent my locker?" Puck asked. "Okay, uh... I just pushed it closed like always. And it got this big dent in it." 

This was so weird, Santana thought as Puck rambled on about how great he'd felt during practice. Sure, superpowers were normal, if rare, but they didn't just randomly spring up in a bunch of kids in the middle of Ohio. If—god forbid—mutation was to blame, then they wouldn't all turn in the space of a single day. But they hadn't gone through any of the typical causes, unless Mr. Schue was secretly a mad scientist and they were all his experiments.

"What if Mr. Schue is a secret mad scientist?" Finn asked Kurt worriedly. "And we're all his experiments?"

"Stay out of my brain, Hudson," Santana said. 

"You know," Puck said before the argument could develop, "I bent my locker right after Artie did... whatever that was to us. You know, when he tried not to look suspicious."

"Artie did something to you?" Kurt asked as they accelerated through a yellow light.

"Yeah," Puck said. "Yeah, he did. To me... and Finn... and Mike." He met Finn's eyes and they both looked suddenly convinced. "That's totally it. Artie turned us into freaks. It's like he waited years to get revenge for all those times when we filled his bag with sand and threw it at him!"

"No," Kurt said dryly. "That was me. You filled his with mud. Finn said you didn't mind splattering him, but didn't want to knock him out of his chair. I learned to stop carrying electronics after my iPod turned into a prop from The Mummy Returns."

"Oh." Puck hesitated. "Are you sure?"

"I want out of this car," Santana said and began unbuckling her seatbelt. Kurt snapped at her to put it back on, and although she hated herself a little, she followed orders. "But if Artie gave you powers, then, uh, how did I turn my stir-fry into a massive fireball?"

"Maybe he did it to you, too?" Finn theorized. He asked Puck, "You're talking about the neck thing, right?" Puck nodded and Finn frowned in thought.

"Neck thing?" Santana asked with dark suspicion. She was still bitter over losing that perfect skinny iced mocha to the school linoleum tiles. "Wait. Are you telling me that it was Artie who made me feel like—"

"Like something exploded inside your neck," Puck confirmed.

The Navigator slammed to a dead stop in the road. Santana impacted her seat belt so hard that it knocked the wind out of her. Dizzily, she thought that it was a good thing she'd been forced to put it back on. Cars behind them honked and then drove past on both sides. "What the hell, Kurt?" Santana asked with a groan as she rubbed her breastbone. The hit from the seat belt would leave a bruise.

Kurt stared straight ahead. Except for his chest heaving with deep, almost panicked breaths, he didn't move. "Kurt?" Finn asked carefully. "You okay?"

"You felt like... something exploded inside your neck?" he asked in a tiny voice.

Puck caught on first. "Ha!" he said and pointed at Kurt as he mocked him. "You had it happen, too!"

Kurt shot past "panicked breathing" and into "hyperventilating" as he realized he was probably part of their little freaky superpowers club. Finn looked nervously between the group, then leaned over and said with false cheer, "Hey, it's okay! Remember? You promised me everything would work out. This is no big deal. Everything's going to be fine. Right?" 

"I lied, Finn!" Kurt wailed. "We're going to get locked up!"

"You lied," Finn repeated. His smile fell away. "But... you said it was all going to be okay."

"That was before I knew I had them!"

"Shouldn't we be driving before the cops come to move us?" Puck wondered as he looked through the window. They were still motionless in the middle of the road. Long skidmarks scarred the asphalt behind them.

Maybe, if Santana focused very hard, she would be able to set herself on fire again. At this point it seemed like the better option.

* * *

When it was determined that Kurt was too panicked to drive, Santana ordered him out of his seat and took over from there. She flicked her gaze between the mirrors and squinted at the sight behind her. Puck had started off mocking Kurt's troubled state, but then it was like something tugged at his newly gooey heartstrings and he actually seemed concerned.

Ugh. Puck caring about Kurt; dating Lauren had totally neutered him. 

"I really think I should drive," Finn said yet again as she rounded a turn.

"I didn't have to wait for my license for a year because I slammed into a mailman on my learner's permit. How about you?" She smirked when Finn didn't argue, and they stayed silent until he pointed to a house and told her to pull over. "Come on," Santana decided when Puck was still busy trying to cheer up Kurt. "We'll go talk to him."

They had to wait on an answer when they hit the doorbell, but she supposed Artie took a while to get anywhere. "So," she began as they stood on the porch. "What's it like to read people's minds?"

Finn's brow furrowed slightly. "Weird. It's kind of echo-y, I guess. And it sounds like your voices, but I know I'm not really hearing you. What's it feel like to set things on fire?"

"Hot." 

"Makes sense," Finn allowed as the door opened.

Artie grinned at them. "Oh my god, you guys. Do I ever have news for you."

"Ours is probably bigger," Santana said thinly, and managed to hold onto her smile for a few seconds longer. Then it fell away and she lunged forward to grab his ugly sweater vest inside her clenched fists. "You turned us into superpowered freaks, you asshole!"

"Oh," Artie said after a long, careful moment of consideration. "Uh, that was pretty much my news, too." Finn blinked at him, but made no move to separate the two as Artie continued, "Look! I can make this stuff out of nowhere! It's great."

Santana let him go as he retrieved something from his pocket and waved it in front of her nose. "What the hell's this?" she demanded as she snatched the object out of the air and studied it.

"I'm not sure," Artie admitted. "It's either a mind control device or a homing signal for bees. But I made it in twenty minutes out of a broken graphing calculator. I just knew how!" Her anger seemed to penetrate his joy and he tilted his head to the side. "So something happened to you?"

"When you did that thing to our necks," Santana grumbled, "you turned Puck into the Hulk, me into the Human Torch, and Finn into that bald mutant telepath guy." She saw Artie's lips twitch at the last bit and admitted, "Yeah, that part is pretty funny."

Finn glared at them and grabbed the mind-control/bee signal away from her.

"That's kind of cool," Artie decided. "You're welcome?"

"I set my house on fire an hour ago!" Santana said and shoved him. "And Puck ripped a tree apart!"

He rolled a few inches before he managed to stop. "Oh," Artie said and paled. "I guess I didn't consider that they could be dangerous." He shifted uncomfortably. His lips moved with silent consideration as he presumably ran through the worst-case scenarios. Santana joined him in that. She could picture family members being set on fire rather than a kitchen counter. Siblings being ripped apart instead of trees. Artie admitted, "Um, I kind of did the neck thing to everyone in New Directions except for Sam and Lauren. Maybe we should go grab them before someone else gets... surprised?"

"Bingo," Santana said. She considered the numbers, and to everyone's surprise announced she would ride with Artie in his van while the other boys stayed in Kurt's car. It served as a convenient excuse to get away from Noah Puckerman: Annoying Softie, Kurt Hummel: Annoying Panic, and Finn Hudson: Annoying Everything, and they seemed to be in at least a temporary truce over the Brittany issue. "So, are we going to the Hummel house when we're all together?"

"Hummel? We live there, too," Finn protested.

Santana repeated, "So, are we going to the Hummel house?" and ignored Finn's wounded look. 

"I've got a better idea," Artie slowly said, and they agreed on it before splitting up. He jotted down a quick note to his parents, closed the front door, and then reappeared inside the opening garage. "I'm sorry about your house," he said once he and Santana were inside his van. "Is it okay?"

"Mostly, yeah," she shrugged, and then smirked at the sight through her window. "It looks like that thing you made is for bees." Finn was frantically batting them away and diving for Kurt's car.

Artie laughed, but then sobered and said, "This could be big. Really big, you know?"

"Yeah." She eyed him disdainfully. "I mean, of all people, I'm willingly spending time with you. That's at least Fake Rapture Prophecy-level, if not 2012 Mayan Apocalypse-level."

"Thanks," he said after a long pause. "I think."

She shrugged again and directed him to Quinn's.

Between her, Brittany, and Tina, Santana became quite practiced with an explanation of "Artie gave us superpowers because he's a moron, you have to come with us before you accidentally destroy your house, yes, I know this is stupid." And then there they were, parking at their safest bet for a group meeting undisturbed by parents: the Berry residence.

She really hoped Rachel had stocked back up on alcohol.

* * *

"Are you sure her dads are gone?" Santana asked as their group stood on Rachel's doorstep.

"They're antiquing in Chicago," Kurt said. He saw Santana turn to stare at him and blinked owlishly back. "What?"

Gay as a box of glitter-covered dicks, she just managed not to say as she pushed the doorbell again and held it down. As the doorbell chimed incessantly inside the house, she allowed herself to feel a little proud for biting down on that response. She was growing as a person, or whatever shit Oprah would pull out. The door finally opened. Though she could see Rachel ready to complain about the held-down doorbell, Santana pushed past her. "Move, Smurfette."

"Wait, I'm confused," Rachel said as she watched the majority of New Directions file into her house. "Is there a practice? While I am all for the idea of group summer practice sessions, I've been doing posture exercises all afternoon and haven't warmed up my voice. I would have appreciated a little warning."

Mercedes closed the door behind her, and only then asked, "Have you blown anything up?"

Rachel blinked. "Not that I'm aware of?"

The questions came rapidly from everyone there. Most of the group hadn't yet discovered any superpowers and so their imaginations were left free to wander. Between them, they'd reviewed many of the biggest names while wondering if they might get the same abilities. 

"Moved things with your mind?"

"Turned invisible?"

"Shot spikes out of your hands?"

"Glooped out spiderwebs?"

"Controlled the weather?"

"Flown?"

"Teleported?"

"Leapt tall buildings in a single bound?"

Puck, annoyed, cut off everyone's suggestions to turn toward Finn. "That's Superman, dude. Be serious."

"I don't understand what's going on," Rachel said with a nervous laugh. "Why are you all talking about superheroes?"

"Not superheroes," Tina said. "Just superpowers." She paused. "Wait. We _could_ be superheroes! Oh my god, this is so awesome!"

"We're all going to get locked up," Kurt said pathetically and went off to sulk against the wall.

"Did your neck feel like it exploded today?" Santana asked, annoyed at the continuing digressions. When Rachel nodded, she clapped her hands sharply together. "Congrats! You're a freak like us, welcome to the club, I set my house on fire earlier."

"What?" Rachel asked. Her eyes were huge, and only grew larger as she heard the summarized story of what Artie had done.

"It's like I pulled the magical sword from the stone and gathered everyone together to be heroes!" Artie's eyes sparkled. "I'm King Arthur."

"Wasn't his name 'Wart' in that Disney movie?" Santana wondered. "Can we call you that?" An annoying, thin whine grew too irksome to ignore and she stormed over to Kurt. He looked up at her approach and continued whining.

"What if I turn blue?" Kurt asked. "Or purple? And not a nice amethyst, but some hideous puce? That's it. That's what's going to happen. We're going to get locked up and experimented on and I'm going to turn puce."

"Do they really lock up mutants?" Mike asked with clear concern.

"I really do not want to be dealing with this," Quinn muttered.

"Wait, so are we for sure mutants after all?" Finn asked.

"Oh my god, _shut up_ ," Santana said. She gripped Rachel's forearm. "We need one hundred percent privacy. Can we use your basement?" At the nod, she led everyone down there. Puck carried Artie's chair single-handedly down the stairs and looked exceedingly pleased with himself for it. Santana rolled her eyes. "Puck, stop flexing. Kurt, stop whining. Rachel, make us some snacks." They all eyed her. "What?"

As everyone began to argue, Finn stood up in the middle of their circle and gestured until people paid him attention. "Guys. Guys! We need to focus. Who here has pinned down a power?" He raised his hand and only Santana, Puck, and Artie followed suit. Finn looked disappointed. "Oh. Well, that wasn't very helpful. We knew all those."

Rachel cleared her throat. "Excuse me, and I don't mean to overrule your leadership efforts, Finn, but _what_? This really sounds all too preposterous to believe."

"I seriously, actually burnt down my house," Santana snapped. "That preposterous enough for you?"

"Technically," Kurt said as he looked up from fretting over their futures, "the firemen stopped it well before that. And yes, Rachel, it's true. All four of them have displayed sudden superpowers. Santana's was just used that one time, but I know Artie and Puck said they've been testing theirs out. They seem to be reliable enough. Finn and I certainly tested until we were positive that he was reading my mind."

After a moment, Finn glared at seemingly the entire room. "Okay, are we done with the joke about me and brain powers, now?"

"Sorry," Tina and Mercedes mumbled.

"I just turned a pillow into a goldfish," Brittany announced.

Everyone hesitated, looked like they were debating whether or not to acknowledge her, and then turned in reluctant unison. "What?" Quinn asked.

Brittany moved and gestured at the floor behind her. Sure enough, a goldfish was flopping and gasping against the rug. Rachel yelped and leapt for it, then vanished in search of water. After watching her leave, Brittany turned back to face the group. "I don't think I've done that before, so I guess that might be my power."

"I'm really not sure how to respond," Mike said.

Mercedes squinted at Artie suspiciously. "You gave Brittany power over goldfish?"

Finn piped up. "Maybe he gave her power over pillows."

"To be totally accurate," Artie said, "I hit a big button labeled 'off.' I think I just woke up whatever was already there."

With great amounts of huffing and gesturing, Rachel returned. "Well, that poor fish is in my glass next to the sink, and seems to be doing fine. Brittany, how could you do that to such a helpless creature?"

"I honestly don't know," Brittany said.

"If you're up," Santana asked Rachel as she stretched languorously against the floor, "you mind getting me a drink? It's stuffy down here. It must be the horrible decorating scheme."

Rachel bit back a reply as her hostess manners seemed to kick in. She forced a broad, tight smile at everyone. "Would anyone else like something?" She began listening, soon gave up, and said she would just bring down what was available before vanishing again.

Santana realized that Kurt had passed on a drink and turned to him with a frown. "Wait. How are you not sweating and not thirsty?" He looked confused, and so she let out an annoyed noise, flopped over to better face him, and pointed at the jacket he had on over a light sweater. It was far more clothing than anyone else was wearing on an uncharacteristically warm day. "What's with the coat, Robert Peary?" 

"I'm not wearing a coat," Kurt said immediately, but followed her finger down when she kept pointing. "Oh my god!" He stared at the suede jacket she'd noticed earlier, barely even breathing as he did, and then jerked his head up and glared at Artie furiously. "This is from the Versace Spring 2012 collection."

"Okay?" Artie deadpanned.

"You gave me powers over _clothes_?" Kurt asked in rapidly mounting outrage. "Seriously? You can't just turn me into a freak who’s Washington’s number one punching bag, I also have to be a freak who's like some amped-up cartoon joke version of me?"

"Again, technically, I don't think I _gave_ anyone superpowers," Artie said. He held one finger in the air as he lectured. "I think I just woke things up."

"Well, that's just wonderful," Kurt mourned as he pulled his knees to his chest and sank upon them. Mercedes looked uncertainly at everyone, and then scooted across the floor to comfort him. "Puck rips apart trees. Finn reads minds. I summon ready-to-wear. I—" He cut off abruptly, sat up, and patted his chest. "I'm not wearing a coat."

"Awesome, Kurt's gone crazy," Santana said.

He glared at her. "Mercedes, feel my arm." When she did, reacted with surprise, and then kept squeezing his forearm in various places, he nodded to her. "Right? You can see the coat, but it's not actually there. It's... it's an illusion. I don't have power over clothes, I have power over _illusions_! Oh thank god,” Kurt said and sagged with relief. "If my life's over, at least it's ending for something less stupid."

"That explains why you popped up out of nowhere!" Santana realized. "Like some freaky ninja. And you didn't let the cops see us looking all suspicious! I have to admit, that's kind of cool." She saw some people's confusion over the mention of emergency workers and reminded them, "Remember, accidentally almost burnt down my house? I make fire. Whoosh. Artie, Puck, tell them yours, since we know that Finn's the telepath." That was still funny; Finn glared at her when she smirked. Yeah, she'd get mileage out of that one.

"Like Kurt said," Puck began, "I ripped apart a tree. And you all saw me carry Artie down the stairs, but I think I can do a lot more than that. I'm just kind of buff and fast and awesome. For all I know I've got freaky fighting powers, too. I love it. Thanks, Artie."

Artie gave him a thumbs-up, and then said, "I make things. I don't even know what I'm making sometimes, but I'm a techie genius all of a sudden. Oh my god. Oh my _god_ , I'm Tony Stark! I'm going to be a billionaire!" he added and actually started giggling.

"Guys!" Finn said with annoyance when bedlam erupted anew, but Rachel pressed a cold drink into his hand and he visibly lost his train of thought. "Uh, right, whatever," he said when she announced her plans to find a large vase for her new goldfish.

"It's my new goldfish," Brittany said.

"It was my pillow," Rachel said. "And don't you have a cat?"

"Yes, that's why I want the goldfish."

Rachel narrowed her eyes. "Do not let her move from here until I've taken the fish to a safe location," she ordered Puck before vanishing again.

"We need a system," Finn groaned as he looked at the total chaos around him. "Okay. Everyone who hasn't figured out a power, line up. Maybe we can test you out."

* * *

"Rawr!" Tina said as she made claws with her fingers and gestured at a cardboard cutout. She held that position for a few seconds, and then drew back and shook her head. "Nothing's happening."

"That's okay!" Finn said and jotted something down in the Hello Kitty notebook he'd found laying around the room. "We'll figure out what you do." He saw the protest—or heard it in his mind, possibly—and smiled as he cut her off. "Look at how many of us got powers after we had the neck explosions. You've gotta have 'em, too." That reassured Tina and she went to the back of the line.

Santana and Kurt, as two who'd already identified their abilities, were leaning against the wall. She was bored. He'd returned to being morose and annoying. "So, who is that a cutout of?"

Kurt looked up. "Helen Hayes."

That name meant nothing to her. "Why does Rachel have a cardboard cutout of her that's wearing a necklace made of gold star stickers?"

"Because she has an EGOT."

"Oh." That meant nothing to her, either. "Why is someone selling cardboard cutouts of Helen Hayes?"

"Rachel had the set custom-made."

She hesitated. "Go back to moping."

He did.

Now Mercedes was up to bat and seemed to be having as little success as Tina. She tried to ignore the suggestion behind her for as long as she could, but eventually she relented, curled her hands, and shouted, "Rawr!" A two-dimensional Helen Hayes stared implacably back at her. "I feel stupid, Finn. This is stupid."

"I think we should develop a checklist of all likely potential powers," Rachel said. "And test everyone for all of them, rather than stopping when we find one. After all, many superheroes have multiple abilities. And Puck has mentioned that he's both fast and strong."

"It's true," Puck said. "I do rock."

"Or we could just throw things at people and see what happens," Santana suggested as she hurled her empty Coke can at Mercedes. It rebounded off a glimmering force field and everyone shouted in surprised delight.

"Wait," Mercedes laughed. "Was that me? Did I seriously just do that?"

"Invisible Woman!" Artie shouted, but followed it up more quietly with a note as to Iron Man's obvious superiority.

"Does that mean I can go invisible?" Mercedes asked. "That'd be kinda cool." She closed her eyes and focused, but her eyebrows furrowed and she clenched her fists without any success. "Come on," she whispered as her hands started glowing. Everyone shouted again and, startled, she let the energy vanish.

"Whoa," Kurt said. He rolled his eyes when Mercedes giggled and told him to throw something else, and obligingly pitched another empty can.

"Awesome!" Finn said and made notes in his book. "So Mercedes can put up a bubble shield thingie and do... something with her hands that might be an attack, if she can figure out how to use it." That caught Rachel's attention. She hurried over to him, got up on her toes, and whispered something to Finn. He blinked. "Oh. Yeah. If people are going to start using attacks, then we'd probably better go outside so we don't blow up your house."

"Good idea," Santana said with uncharacteristic sincerity.

"It's still light outside," Quinn said condescendingly. "Were you planning to have all the neighbors rate our efforts, or just leave them alone to call the cops?"

Finn looked momentarily annoyed, but then frowned and scratched his head. "She's right. We've gotta do this later tonight. Maybe... head out of town, go into some fields or something?"

"Phone tag!" Tina announced and everyone whipped out their cell phones to establish alibis.

Santana tapped her hands against the floor and waited. She, after all, had already been excused from her house for the night. As Kurt was the nearest phone conversation, his was the one she heard. It didn't seem to be going well. "Rachel's just having an end of the year party for New Directions, so Finn and I were hoping... yes, it was at her party where he got drunk. No, he's not here. No, we haven't started drinking! I mean, we're not _going_ to drink and...." Kurt grimaced. "Dinner in twenty minutes. Got it."

"Smooth," Finn drawled. "Okay, uh, we'll sneak out and meet you guys at eleven?" He rattled off an intersection outside of town, which Santana vaguely recognized as being near farmland. Those who had successfully lied to their parents gave him an immediate thumbs-up; those who would have to sneak out waged a short mental war before they nodded.

For the people who had successfully pulled off the ruse, their attention quickly returned to their powers. "Hit my hand," Mercedes said as she held up her palm. Tina's fist rebounded off it and they both giggled. "Puck! Hit my hand! No, I'm serious, do it!" Though he clearly pulled his punch, it too rebounded and Mercedes crowed with delight.

"Maybe I'll figure out how to develop nuclear fusion," Artie said hopefully. "Or sex robots." Rachel made a face at him. "They're both inventions that would make me a lot of money," he explained like she'd entirely missed the point.

Others, like Quinn and Mike, looked concerned about what that night might uncover for them. And then there was Illusion Boy, wallowing in his last few minutes before he and Finn had to head home and try to cover when Finn inevitably slipped up and said something stupid. Plus, Kurt could apparently make himself appear to be wearing anything in the world, and he was wearing a strap and buckle spectacular? One day Santana was going to ask him why half his wardrobe was made up of bondage gear. She really was.

"Why are you so freaking down on this?" Puck wondered as he sat down next to Kurt. "This is great! I really am like Captain America or something. I could be... I don't know. Captain Ohio." Puck grinned suddenly. "Captain _Israel._ "

"Haven't you paid any attention to how mutants get treated?" Kurt asked. 

"Uh. Not really. I just like it when that guy with the eyebeams is on the news. He's really good at blowing shit up. Besides, we don't know we're mutants." Puck shrugged. That annoying softy expression was coming back over him; Santana shuddered. "And so what if we are? The X-Men kick ass. So can we."

"Oh, it's fine for you," Kurt grumbled. "And you." He gestured at Santana and she frowned at him. _Don't pull me into your weepfest._ "But you can only have so many checkmarks against you before the world figures that, well, you're just not worth caring about. I've learned very well that I'm already balancing right on that line. And you all got _useful_ powers. I got powers for... hiding. Running away. Not being myself. These stupid powers couldn't wait to come out until I was around a town that doesn't judge me just for existing?"

"Well, you've come out," Santana smirked. "Maybe they took it as a sign."

"Yeah, I already made that 'mutant equals gay' comparison to Finn. Kind of obvious."

"Oh." Santana hesitated when her insult died on the runway, frowned, and then walked away without excusing herself. Whatever. Puck was actually trying to cheer Kurt up again, and even if that made her brain hurt to see, at least it would keep Kurt quiet.

Now that Santana paid more attention, she could tell that Quinn was also saying many of the same things as Kurt. Mike and Brittany looked increasingly concerned as she talked about old laws requiring mutants to register themselves. They might face not only fear from using their powers, but real, serious government attention simply for being themselves. 

That mutant fixation was so unfair, Santana grumbled as she sought out a full can of something to drink. If they'd only dunked their heads in vats of radioactive waste, Washington wouldn't care. Well, for all they knew, the school was built over a Superfund site and mutagenic toxins had been slowly leeching into them for years. It was something to hope for.

"We've really gotta go," Finn eventually decided. "We'll see you at the field at eleven, right?" He waited for everyone's answer, and then he and Kurt walked toward the stairs.

"Wait!" Santana said as she remembered something. "Um, so... where am I staying? I mean, my dad thinks I'm with you, but I kinda sorta doubt you want to drag me over to your adorable family dinner."

Kurt and Finn exchanged glances, considered that, and then Kurt looked back. "Rachel doesn't have any parents around tonight to be concerned with. You could stay with her."

"That... makes sense," Rachel said reluctantly. Santana gave her a wavering smile. Forcing her lips into that shape gave her something to focus on besides how much she wanted to barf. With a deep breath, Rachel added, "And of course you can stay here tonight, Santana. I'm sure the accident at your house was very traumatic."

"Thanks," Santana said with just as much reluctance. Each word felt like it was being torn out of her. "That'll work."

Ew.

On the upside, maybe she could accidentally set their house on fire, too.


	5. The Big Game

"You know, we drove some other people there," Finn pointed out as Kurt's SUV rumbled down the road.

"Artie and Rachel can drive anyone who needs to go home in the meantime," Kurt said, distracted. "You shouldn't talk."

"Uh. What?"

"During dinner," Kurt said as he realized with concern that they would have to make it through an entire family meal without Finn saying anything suspiciously knowledgeable. "What happens if you don't notice that Dad thought something about our summer jobs instead of actually saying it, but respond to it anyway?"

"Oh," Finn said. He stayed quiet for a while as Kurt focused on the road. "Yeah, good point. I'll shut up." For a while there was only the sound of traffic. "I wish I got Puck's powers instead of this stupid thing."

"People will stop making jokes about it. And I'm sorry that I thought, well, you know."

"It's not that." Finn reconsidered his words. "It's not only that. He gets to be fast and strong, like all the guys I had posters of when I was little. No one cares about brain powers and they just mean you're the guy that the strong guys save. This sucks."

"Tell me about it," Kurt said almost wryly. Finn flashed him a smile at the reminder of his illusory abilities. "This wasn't supposed to be what my summer was like. Any of our summers. And," he continued with a hollow laugh, "as you so accurately pointed out, the two of us have to deal with all this stress and worry over _brain_ powers. The ones that still leave you very, very vulnerable to being thrown around. My only consolation is that illusions are better than control over clothing."

"It'll be okay," Finn said. Now that Kurt was so distraught over yet another mark being made against him, the comforting role seemed to have passed to him. "I mean, I'm disappointed that I'm not like Puck, but that doesn't mean this has to actually be bad. We'll figure out what to do."

"I guess. This was a hard year," Kurt said quietly as they turned onto their street. "I don't know if I could handle another one."

Finn winced sympathetically. "It'll really be okay. Just... it'll work out. Want me to sing that Gaga song again?"

That actually made him laugh, though it was short and hollow. "No. But thanks." They pulled up in front of the house and, after some consideration, Kurt parked on the street near Finn's truck instead of on the spare space in the driveway. "We're going to need to sneak out," he explained. "And that means starting up the engine further away from the house."

"Good thinking," Finn said. "Uh, but before we go inside: it'd be a bad idea to just tell them, right? Like we talked about doing when it was just me? There's some reason we're not doing that?"

Kurt stared at him flatly. It was like the last few hours had totally fled his mind. "Yes, when it was just you maybe being a mutant. Something normal that a family could hide. Not an entire flock of us out of absolutely nowhere, and with one house already as a near-casualty. Do you want to be hauled to a doctor who might feed all our files to Washington? Get shipped off to that school in New York for our own good? I don't know about you, but I don't think I'm up for another transfer."

"Point taken. Stealth mode: engaged." Finn gave him one last big, encouraging grin before adding, "And you know, Rachel pointed out that people can have more than one thing. Maybe we'll find something more awesome for us, you know? We're planning to test stuff out tonight, right?"

"We can only hope," Kurt agreed. Indeed, he had to hope to find something that would let him stand up to any abuse he took because of his powers. And he could only hope to not look the hideous part in the process. At least if—god forbid—something happened, he could illusion himself back to normality.

"What's puce?" Finn asked as he headed up the front walk.

Kurt shot him a dirty look. "No mindreading at the house when they're around! If you get into that habit then you'll slip up at a bad time."

"Sorry," Finn mumbled. His key slipped into the lock, turned it, and they were greeted by the heavy smell of meat and potatoes. Two unimpressed parental faces also loomed. "Hi?" Finn asked sheepishly.

"Are you not very hungry? I might have made too much food." Carole asked. "Because you made a sandwich with a lot of Burt's favorite cuts and left it on the table to go bad."

Burt cleared his throat. "Maybe they were in a hurry to get to Rachel's big party that they'd never told us about before now."

_Oh, crap_ , Kurt heard and nearly swallowed his tongue when he realized Finn had spoken into his mind. They both froze for long enough that their parents picked up on it, and prompted an answer from them impatiently. "It was really spur of the moment," Kurt said in a rush. Finn still looked stunned over the discovery that his power transmitted as well as received. "Rachel originally called everyone over to manage her, uh, EGOT collectibles."

"Her what collectibles?" Carole wondered.

"She bugged everyone until we went over there to make her stop calling," Kurt said. "It was just getting really annoying. You know, Rachel Berry on a mission." The words themselves were fine; he knew that his face, though, was a dead giveaway of anxiety. He had that huge, nervous smile he got when he knew he was dead in the water with his father and was hoping desperately to get out of it. If only he could stop reacting like that; it was like a big flashing sign every time.

Burt studied him, and then eventually nodded. "Okay, so she sprung it on you. But you two don't take off without leaving a note, and you don't waste food like that. Put it back in the fridge."

"Will do," Kurt said in a tone that was climbing a bit too high to go with the gently exasperated expression he now realized he'd made as an illusion. "Um, we'll just go put our stuff away and be right back down for dinner?"

"What stuff?" Carole asked in confusion. Kurt froze; he'd just wanted an excuse to talk to Finn alone and had said the first thing that came to mind. He'd forgotten that they hadn't grabbed their bags when they ran out of the house.

"Hey," Burt said as he brushed the curtain aside and peered at the front yard. "Kurt, why'd you park on the street?"

Finn stared helplessly at him. Kurt felt his brain churn in search of a possible answer. With any traitorous expressions safely masked, it was easier to focus on the words themselves. "I noticed some oil in the parking lot today when I backed out. I think it was probably from the car there before me, but I don't want to stain the driveway if I have a leak."

"You keep an eye on that," Burt said with concern.

"Absolutely," Kurt agreed. "I'll check under it tomorrow and if there's anything, I'll take it in. Now Finn and I are going upstairs to, um...."

"We have to pee," Finn announced.

Burt and Carole stared at them in silence. "Okay," Carole said. "You go do that."

"We have to pee?" Kurt hissed when they were upstairs. "We, plural?"

"Well, maybe instead we could go put away the stuff that we weren't carrying," Finn shot back and Kurt huffed in annoyance.

"Fine. I just wanted to come up here to remind you to just... not talk. If you have to talk, talk about football practice. Talk about the big game."

"What big game?" Finn asked.

Kurt rolled his eyes. "I don't know! Whatever game is big right now, talk about that one. Talk about movies and food and boring safe topics if you are absolutely forced into conversation, and nothing else. Forget my earlier ban on mindreading, but only for me. If you need to say anything, say it into my brain unless it's an answer to one of their questions. It will be a nice, normal night in which they go to bed at nine-thirty and at ten forty-five we will be on our way out the front door."

"Okay," Finn said after a deep breath. "We can do this."

"We can do this," Kurt confirmed and they returned downstairs to find the table already set for dinner.

Carole looked up from where she was adjusting a tray of roasted potatoes. "Kurt, did you change clothes just for dinner? That's really not necessary."

His eyes widened and he looked down at himself. The suede jacket he'd supposedly walked in wearing was gone, replaced by a thin olive green sweater with an elaborate design across the shoulders. Burberry Prorsum, this time. On the upside, he'd never have to pass up a piece of clothing over its price tag again.

_That thing is ugly_ , Finn's voice said in his head.

_Shut it._ Kurt smiled winningly at Carole and tried to keep his attention firmly focused on that sweater in the hopes of avoiding a wardrobe change in the middle of dinner. "Anything is an occasion for new statements through fashion, including meals. Everything looks wonderful. Let's eat."

It was thankfully easy to keep Finn quiet during dinner, as he kept shoveling food into his mouth and grunting his approval of everything he tasted. Kurt was the one who found himself being drawn into conversations when he only picked at his meal. "No, it tastes great," he assured Carole. "It turns out I'm just not very hungry. I'm sorry, I'll reheat some later."

"He's probably trying to fit into something again," Burt said with a mostly-affectionate roll of his eyes. 

"You know me," Kurt said and giggled nervously.

Burt eyed him as he chewed and swallowed another mouthful, and then asked, "So, you have plans this weekend? I know you said Blaine would be busy at... something for a lot of the summer."

"Theme park," Kurt supplied. "He sings."

"Uh, great," Burt said with what he probably meant to be acceptance. "Figured you'd try to squeeze in time before your summer jobs really take off. Finn, same for you. The weeks'll go by fast before you're really learning the ropes at the garage. Don't waste them."

"You know, that all completely slipped my mind," Kurt said with total honesty. "Um. Well. Dalton goes for another week, so he's in the middle of finals. I'll just send encouraging texts and tell him to get offline if I see him spending too much time on Facebook." And, Kurt added to himself, avoid him until he figured out how to explain to Blaine that he was dating a complete freak that might turn some hideous color, sprout a tail, and grow a foot in height.

He saw Finn staring at him and sighed internally. _It really is unlikely to happen, Finn. I'm just wallowing. Relax. Keep eating._

Finn let out a whine as he shoveled more food into his mouth and shook his head when Carole asked if something was wrong. "No," Finn said through a mouthful of potatoes. "I, um, just...." He saw Kurt glaring at him. "I was thinking about the big game."

"Which game?" Burt asked in confusion.

"...The big one. We had practice today. And so I was thinking about the big game." Finn smiled nervously. Kurt barely restrained himself from stabbing Finn with his fork.

"Oh," Burt said. "She's already got you thinking ahead to the first big game of the season, huh? You know, she really seems like a good coach."

"She's very tough on them," Carole agreed, "but I've never seen Finn more excited about his sports than he's been with her."

_We might actually make it out of this alive,_ Kurt thought with relief and saw Finn smile at him. _And we can prepare more before next Friday's dinner._ That smile vanished. "Well!" Kurt announced when he'd picked at as much food as his anxiety-ridden stomach could hold. "That was wonderful. Carole, do you mind if I tuck some away for leftovers before Finn devours everything in front of him?" It was a perfect ruse; he was excused early to start protecting his future meals from Finn's appetite. _Just keep eating and don't talk_ , he thought as he left the table and was gratified to hear Burt and Carole take entirely over the conversation.

"Finn's going to show me some video games," Kurt said at the end of the meal, after he'd lingered in the kitchen to scrub the counters and all of the dinner dishes. "He thinks it will help me bond. With, you know. The guys. The guys in Glee club, the jocks, the guys."

"Good plan," Burt said sincerely. "Finn, nice to see you pulling him in. Just...." He trailed off, leaned in, and murmured something quietly to Finn, who stammered a response. "Okay, you boys head on up, we won't bother you." With a chuckle, he added, "I think you might have your work cut out for you trying to teach Kurt how to play those."

Finn and Kurt shot one last overly-cheerful grin to their parents, and then nearly undid all their good work by bolting for the stairs. "You were so good at lying on your feet. Well, most of the time. Maybe that's one of your powers!" Finn suggested, grinning.

"I really was," Kurt marveled. "I mean, I could use some improvement, but I was actually rather good at... espionage, I suppose."

"Yeah, _way_ better than usual."

Kurt glared at him, let himself into Finn's room, and closed the door behind both of them. "What did Dad whisper to you?"

Finn actually snickered. "He asked if I could try to make you be friends with anyone but Puck, because he doesn't trust 'that mohawk kid.'"

Even after the tension and life-altering discoveries of the day, that made Kurt laugh. It passed and he was once again left fretting over what that night might turn up for them all, and what the far-reaching future might hold. "And now we wait."

* * *

Just as expected, their parents went to bed at 9:30. The television still echoed through the door, but it was on a timer. It turned off at 10 when some old sitcom episode had lulled them to sleep.

"Do you think we're supposed to be superheroes?" Finn asked quietly as they watched the clock inch toward the appointed hour, well after that. "Is that why we can do this stuff? I know I freaked out earlier, but if we can all do this amazing stuff... maybe I was wrong."

Kurt looked up from staring sadly at Blaine’s texts. He’d sent a few vague replies of encouragement over his finals, reminders to focus, and hadn’t been able to manage anything more. Seriously, how was he supposed to add one more thing onto the pile of what they had to deal with? What would he even say? ‘Hey! You know that awesome school in Salem Center with the kids made out of, like, rocks? You think they’re sexy, right?’

“Hello?” Finn said, snapping his fingers.

Refocusing, Kurt shook his head. “No. We're not supposed to be anything. We’re going to figure out exactly what’s happened to us so we know how to _manage_ things, and that is all. I'm going to do nothing for a while, graduate, and then go to school after graduation and pretend none of this ever happened. And if everyone else is smart, they'll do the same thing." Kurt looked exasperated when Finn gasped. "Look, the big villains are all off in big cities, already being faced down by the big heroes with big health insurance policies. And it seems like everywhere else doesn't need superheroes. Do you ever hear about superheroes in...." He picked the least likely city that came to mind. "Milwaukee?"

"Yes," Finn said. "They have the flat guy and the fat lady and they used to have a girl who looked like a squirrel."

Kurt stared at him until he realized Finn was serious, and then gave up and crept down the hallway again to make sure he could hear his father snoring. He nodded, crept stealthily back, and then eased Finn's door shut. "We're good. You go first. Wait by my car. Do not turn it on."

"Why me first?"

"Because if they catch you, it'll be easy to make up a story about how you heard something and thought you were big, strong, and foolhardy enough to take it on your own." Kurt allowed, "Granted, they'll be worried. They'll tell you that you shouldn't have done that. We won't be able to meet everyone... but we won't be in trouble. If we both leave together, there's no possible excuse."

"Okay," Finn said. "I'll sneak out and be quiet." He nodded when Kurt said to wait on the far side of the car, away from the house, and then stepped out into the dark hallway and moved slowly toward the stairs.

Kurt forced himself to relax. He'd never done anything like this before. Yes, he'd had a short session of breaking and entering in New York, but that was only risking the NYPD. This risked upsetting his _father._ He could hear Finn descending the stairs. He was so loud, even when he was trying to be quiet. He was just too big and too heavy.

The light snapped on in the hallway. Kurt's eyes flew open. He heard the rushing of water in the wall pipes; someone was using the master bathroom. And now someone was fumbling for the bathroom door in the hallway. 

It was at that precise moment that Finn shut the front door without easing it shut like Kurt had demonstrated.

"Hello?" Carole asked. She vanished, and Kurt soon heard footsteps return. No. Dammit! He knew they could deal with failure if they were forced to, but he wanted to meet with everyone and figure out their futures sooner rather than later. He had to know. He _had_ to know what they were all up against in their lives. He _had_ to get back control when it had been yanked away from him yet again. With a sudden fierce determination, Kurt got up and decided to do whatever he had to in order to get those two back in the master bedroom and asleep.

"I'll go look," Burt said. "If you're worried, check on the boys."

_Invisible,_ Kurt thought as he stepped out into the hallway in full view of both parents. _I'm invisible. Invisible, invisible, invisible._ Neither looked at him. He held his breath and plastered himself against the wall as Burt walked past, waited to see which way Carole would go, and silently hurried to beat her to the nearest door: his room. _I'm in the bed,_ Kurt thought with all his might and hoped he could manage more than one illusion at a time. It worked; he could see himself—or at least, a fair approximation of the back of his head—on the bed when he got to the doorway just behind Carole. This was so far beyond strange. 

Then, horror of horrors, she made a move to enter the room. "Kurt?" she asked softly. 

Kurt rolled his eyes in frustration, somehow contorted himself around Carole without brushing against her, and darted for his bed in absolute silence. His feet barely felt like they were touching the carpet. Adrenaline granted fortunate stealth, it seemed; he didn't seem to be able to mask anything but visuals and couldn't afford to make a sound. _Invisible,_ he reminded himself as he approached 'himself' in bed. _I'm in bed and I'm invisible. I'm in bed and I'm invisible._ The headache looming between his eyes showed the risks of trying to manage two distinct illusions at once, but for now they both held. At least the pain eased as the two illusions approached each other and he could merge them into one. If his superpower was all about controlling illusions, then his superpower was pretty easy to overload.

When Carole reached down to brush against his cheek, he was there to feel it. Presumably satisfied that Kurt was still breathing, she then backed out and asked for Finn in the same quiet voice as she began to move down the hall.

"You have gotta be kidding me," Kurt mourned to himself in a tiny whisper as he slipped out of bed and raced to beat her there. _Finn's in bed. Finn's in bed and I'm invisible._ He once again squeezed himself through the tiny space between Carole and the doorframe, slid into bed, and hoped that she wouldn't notice that the cheek she lightly touched didn't match its appearance.

It seemed to work. She whispered for him to sleep tight, patted him on the shoulder, and left the room. Kurt relaxed, only to hear her protest when his father said that the front door was locked, there were no signs of entry, and she'd probably just imagined things. "Burt, I swear I heard the front door open."

They went downstairs and Kurt followed them carefully there. _Invisible. Invisible invisible invisible._ "Just relax," Burt said and flipped open a panel that Kurt thought contained a thermostat or exterior lighting controls for their new house. It definitely wasn't a thermostat or lighting controls, whatever it was. "No one's going to come in through the second story windows, so we'll just turn on the security system for the bottom floor, all right?"

Kurt stared in dull horror as the numbers were punched in, shielded by his father's body. A mechanical voice said that the system was now armed. He beat his head very gently against the wall.

"Okay, back to bed?" Burt suggested and Carole grumbled and nodded. Kurt skittered out of their way to let them pass, wiped away a tiny trickle of blood from his nose that seemed to accompany his lingering headache, and grudgingly followed them up the stairs. 

So much for that, then, Kurt thought with a grumble as he sank onto his bed. As soon as he lay down, though, he sat right back up. Finn was outside. If Finn tried to come inside when he got tired of waiting, he would set off the security system and would have no explanation for why he was out there. He tried thinking at Finn but got no response. And when Kurt sent a text to warn him, he heard the tinny ringtone through the wall; Finn had forgotten to grab his phone. Well. Of course he had. 

"Right," he said with careful consideration as he thought about his options. Kurt stood, took a deep breath, and popped his window screen out of its frame. The window wasn't tiny, but he couldn't imagine that he'd be able to push his body through it and land on the roof beyond with anything like grace. Still, he'd committed this much to what they were doing. And leaving Finn out there, clueless and impatient with an armed security system between them, just begged for trouble. Kurt pulled an ottoman over to the window, tried to figure out how to gain a secure foothold on the roof once he was through, and then went for it.

With one smooth motion he flung himself up and through the empty space, did a flip in midair, and landed on the roof.

Kurt froze. He looked at his feet and then back to the window.

That hadn't been in his plan.

No. He had to focus. Very carefully he inched back to his window, leaned in, and propped the screen loosely against the frame. It wouldn't be obviously askew if Burt or Carole glanced in. Of course, they just had to look at his empty bed to realize he was gone. Perhaps he should have arranged some pillows, but no, there was no time. He had to get to Finn before Finn impatiently opened the door and set off the alarm. 

"Careful," Kurt whispered to himself as he began moving across the roof. At the end was a tree with an overhanging branch that would serve as a perfect ladder... he hoped. His first step felt secure, as did his second. He frowned and then tried taking a longer step like he was walking comfortably across flat ground. His foot landed securely. His balance felt like some impossibly accurate internal gyroscope was maintaining it.

He'd used his illusions to sneak up on Santana out of nowhere, and had contorted himself around Carole without brushing a single fiber of her clothing. He'd glided across the floor in the next best thing to flying. He'd flipped himself through his window and landed like some Olympic gymnast. And during all of those, he hadn't made a sound. 

Kurt grinned impishly at the tree at the far end of the roof. This might be stupid. This might be very, very stupid, but he was suddenly sure he could do it. Energy coursed through his limbs. He took a deep breath, began running across the slanted roof, and launched himself at the overhanging branch when it came within distance. He rotated once around it like a high bar, flipped himself into the air at the far side of the turn, and landed like a cat on his feet.

Finn was right: they had more powers. He wasn't just an illusionist. He was some sort of badass _ninja_ with psychic illusions as his smoke screens. Maybe his powers weren't for running and hiding, after all. Or if they were... they were for people who would never see him coming.

Though his joy started small and reluctant, it grew by the second. Kurt hurried to the car with a fresh smile on his face and saw Finn looking beyond annoyed. "Where have you been?"

"Parents woke up, checked the beds when they heard you leave, and then turned on a security alarm that I didn't know we had," Kurt said. "But I convinced Carole that both of us were asleep in bed." He wiggled his fingers. "You know: illusions. They went back to sleep, I climbed out the window, and... and I'm not sure how you're going to get back inside, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I'm a ninja."

"What?" Finn summarized.

"Come on!" Kurt giggled and hopped into the driver's seat. "We need to hurry, they'll be waiting."

"Since when are you a ninja?" Finn asked as they drove into the darkness. "Did you, like, find weapons or something?"

Just as surely as he'd known he could make that jump, Kurt suddenly knew that he could handle weapons. "No," he said with enthusiasm, "but now I really need some." He _was_ going to be able to fight back if someone tried to make him suffer. His future suddenly looked very different than it had before that night. He wasn't weak. He hadn’t just become a bigger target. He was strong.

Grumpy and not afraid to show it, Finn slouched against the door and watched the streetlights pass over them. "I wish I could kick ass with weapons instead of just being able to read people's minds."

"I ran across the roof at top speed, too," Kurt added giddily. 

They left behind the streetlights and headed for farmland. Finn kept grumbling. "Shut up."


	6. Motivation

Rachel Berry was looking forward to discovering her destiny as a superhero. She was not looking forward to returning to her house with only Santana Lopez for company. "Mercedes?" she asked hopefully as their small group drove toward the appointed meeting location. "Do you want to stay over tonight?"

"Sorry," Mercedes said, sounding quite sincere. "The only way I was able to stay out late tonight was by promising my dad that I'd help in the yard tomorrow morning. I'll need to head home as soon as I figure out what exactly I can do."

"Tina?" Rachel said. "Do you want to stay over? Please?"

"Sorry, Rachel," Tina said. She sounded far less sincere. Even in the darkness, Rachel could picture her smirking. "They want me home before one, and same for Mike. I'll get a ride home from him."

Rachel made a pained noise and called out to their driver, "Artie? Do you want to sleep over?"

"As fun as refereeing your and Santana's inevitable Pillowfight Deathmatch would be," Artie began, but cut off when Rachel crept her way up the rumbling van and smacked the back of his head. "Ow."

"I'm really looking forward to this, too," Santana drawled as Rachel slumped back into her seat. "It'll be super awesome. We'll paint each other's nails and talk about Justin Bieber, like oh my god.”

"Oh, just turn on that Cake Boss marathon again," Rachel grumbled and folded her arms across her chest. 

While Artie made trips home for any group members who had to check in with their parents, Rachel had talked excitedly with Tina and Mercedes about what their futures might hold. Artie joined their enthusiastic discussion upon his return, and they wondered about powers and dreamed about fame.

That entire time, Santana had watched Cake Boss. And whenever they dared to make more noise than she wanted, she turned up the volume. It was, Rachel thought, a far better option for all of them than trying to hold a conversation with Santana. But once they'd had this time as a group, she might be faced with actually talking with the girl. Alone. Lord help her. Cake Boss sounded like a better idea every time she thought about it. They rode the rest of the way in silence and neither girl complained.

"Someone mind scouting out the path?" Artie asked as he pulled off the road, down a driveway, and into an empty field. The only man-made light came from the distant specks of a farmhouse's windows and their headlights. When Artie turned those off, the night looked pitch black to Rachel's eyes until they adjusted. The moon was fortunately full.

"You're good to come out, at least," Tina reported. "But stay near the van, there are potholes.”

They disgorged themselves onto a rough, hard piece of rocky ground. Rachel recognized the place: at the end of the growing season it would be a massive corn maze. They were in the dirt parking lot that had been driven upon by thousands of cars. It was completely empty, with nothing to accidentally destroy, and at that time of year the fields around them only had tiny green shoots. "Good thinking, Finn," Rachel said proudly. He'd found the perfect spot.

The rest of their group arrived in turn until they were all waiting for the arrival of the person who'd sent them there in the first place. "I'm sure Finn and Kurt will be here soon," Rachel said to the milling, impatient party. 

"I'm bored," Santana announced loudly. "You're boring. Let's do something."

"I made the list you wanted, Rachel," Mike said as he handed over his iPad. She squinted at it until he turned down the brightness. "There are a bunch of sites where people track known powers, but I don't know how likely some of them are for us."

"Thank you," she said as she paged through it. Mike was right; it was unlikely that any of them would be whatever a 'Herald of Galactus' was.

"Try running," Puck suggested to Mike. When Mike looked confused he explained, "You took off way ahead of everyone during practice. Maybe you've got serious super speed."

"You kept up with me," Mike said uncertainly.

"Yeah, well, I've probably got serious super speed, too." Puck smiled and looked entirely too pleased with himself.

"Okay," Mike said, shrugging, and looked around for the best place to test himself. He quickly oriented himself along the long driveway, took a deep breath, and vanished into the darkness like a bird diving through the air. Everyone gasped at the speed; it had to be well over a hundred miles an hour.

"...He knows to come back, right?" Mercedes eventually asked.

They heard the sound of delighted crowing in the distance. The cadence of Mike's footsteps against the packed dirt returned, but mid-step he tripped on a pothole hidden by the darkness. Driven by his incredible speed, he flew into the air and was about to land hard. Everyone gasped… and then Mike stopped. When Mike hung parallel to the ground in complete violation of gravity, they gasped again. "Am I flying?" Mike finally asked. 

"You threw yourself at the ground," Mercedes said, "and you missed!" She saw people turning to her. "It's from Hitchhiker's Guide. One of the sequels."

"Is that a nerd book? That's a nerd book, right?" Puck asked. "Why are you reading that?"

"Sam recommended it," she said and promptly shut up.

"Wow," Rachel said as she walked slowly toward Mike. He was still motionless, but she supposed that could be a good thing; if nothing else, it meant that he hadn't hit the ground. Afraid that it would break the spell, she very carefully reached out and touched his shoulder. He bobbed like a balloon but stayed aloft. "Do you suppose anyone else can fly?" Her eyes sparkled and she spun on her heel. "Everyone, test to see if you can fly."

"How?" Quinn asked.

"Just... hop up and try not to fall," Rachel theorized. "Go on, do it!"

At first they seemed reluctant to follow her orders, but the sight of Mike hanging in the air proved too tempting. As he slowly tilted himself to a vertical position, the rest of the people there began jumping up and down where they stood. They were still testing themselves when a pair of headlights approached them on the driveway, and Finn and Kurt climbed out.

"Hey," Finn said. "Sorry, sneaking out was kind of complicated."

Kurt eyed everyone as they closed the doors. "Clearly, we've missed something." He noticed a figure near him in the darkness and turned to face Mike, whose feet were still well above the dirt. "Like that."

"I can fly!" Mike said.

"I'm a ninja," Kurt replied. "Or something to that effect, anyway."

"Cool." Mike hesitated. "I don't actually know how to get down." He took Kurt's hand gladly when the boy offered it, and was able to stay on the ground when Kurt pulled him there.

Rachel asked Finn, “He's ‘a ninja?’”

"Yeah," Finn said glumly. "Apparently he can do flips and be quiet and stuff. Looks like the illusions are to help him with the sneaky side of things. While I’m still just a brain guy.” Her hand ran reassuringly down his arm and he managed to smile. “So, what are we doing?”

“Brittany’s flying,” Quinn answered loudly. Everyone turned to see the lithe girl twirling in the air and giggling like a fiend. They all made noises of wonder and gathered in close, only for the power to cut off abruptly.

Rubbing at her sore rump as she picked herself off the dirt, Brittany complained, “It’s harder than it looks. And I bet it looks pretty hard.”

That made Rachel frown, roll over Finn’s words in her mind, and turn to another section of the rocky ground. Kurt and Mike were testing out their less fantastic abilities. With no illusions or flight currently in the mix, they both seemed entirely sure of what they were doing. Mike pulled off a string of handsprings to rival any Olympian, and then, even more implausibly, so did Kurt. She considered that carefully and then studied Puck. Even if Puck didn’t yet have total control over his strength and speed, he was able to easily access that potential. 

Perhaps it was a matter of physical powers—their bodies, only better—being simpler to draw upon. Considering that she herself had yet to figure out what her powers might be, it encouraged her. The people still waiting to discover their abilities might have something really amazing there. “All right, everyone!” she said, clapping her hands. They ignored her. Rachel scowled and asked, “Hello?” 

Brittany rebounded pebbles off Mercedes’ force field. Tina threw one at Quinn, who glared at her when the rock glanced off her shoulder. Puck crushed similar rocks to dust between his fingers. “Hello?” Rachel tried again. Absolutely no one was listening.

“Hello!” Rachel said just short of outright shouting, and the sky lit up with a dozen points of light. They exploded like fireworks and everyone dropped to the ground to cover their heads. She stared at the night sky as her display faded into afterimages, then nothing. “Was… was that me?”

“Rachel’s voice is her superpower?” Santana asked in disbelief. “Oh god, now she’ll never shut up.”

Glaring fiercely at her, Rachel was about to retort when Finn interrupted. “That was really cool,” he said, grinning. “What did you do?”

“I just… well,” Rachel began, laughing. “No one was listening, and so I tried to project my voice. I suppose I succeeded beyond my wildest intentions.” Mercedes and Artie called for her to do it again—facing away from them—and so she took a deep breath and prepared herself. She was not simply singing, she reminded herself. She was _projecting._ That had to be the key. This time, rather than simple words, she sent bars of a favorite song through the air. Each note pierced the darkness like some magical spell, leaving a trail of energy in magnificent colors before it exploded to nothing.

It was the most stunning thing she had ever seen in her life. For a moment, Rachel had to fight down the very real urge to run over to Artie and kiss him on the lips for awakening it. “Oh,” she said in a tiny, amazed voice. “Yes, I suppose that’s my power.”

“It’s really pretty,” Brittany said, but then tilted her head and asked, “Does that mean you can’t ever sing unless you’re trying to kill a bad guy?” At that, nearly the entire choir turned to her. Some faces looked far more interested in the question than others.

Refusing to acknowledge that possibility, Rachel cleared her throat. “I was purposefully projecting my voice, Brittany. It was a very specific type of approach.” She rattled off a few bars of another favorite piece before she let herself succumb to any worry. Even so, her notes floating safely out as music nearly weakened her knees. She covered that relief quickly, like she’d never doubted otherwise, and replied, “See? If we have these powers, we should know how to control them. I clearly am further along on the scale of having that control. But I’m sure all of you will catch up.”

“Uh. I can’t get down again,” Mike said from somewhere above Finn’s shoulder.

Right, then. They had a lot of work to do.

* * *

It was a handy thing that Mike had given her his iPad, Rachel thought with delight as she clicked wildly through web pages. She was vaguely aware of people testing powers around her, but her focus was consumed by the media reports. The fanpages. The _merchandise._

Stores sold children’s decor that covered their rooms with logos of the biggest names in New York. Little girls posed in Halloween costumes with Ms. Marvel’s lightning bolt across their chest, or with the Wasp’s wings on their back. (The Fantastic Four’s long underwear-friendly costume was recommended for cold-weather locations.) Numerous blogs told of close encounters with superheroes, anything ranging from “that X-Man with the wings got them caught when he was getting out of his limo, lmao” to “the big green Young Avenger shoved a car away from me when it was about to hit! He saved my life!!! I should really learn his name. :)”

The superheroes were _icons._ Absolutely everyone wanted to be them, be around them, be saved by them.

Rachel landed on a story about another hero and felt a rush of warmth that passed any romantic crush. Some genres of music tended to pass under her radar. That must be why she’d been unaware of the superhero-slash-musician Dazzler, who turned her spectacular visual effects into support for a thriving performance career. And those beautiful lights didn’t actually come from her singing, just the ambient noise! Rachel’s performances could be _infinitely_ more impressive.

If she hadn’t been worried about twisting her ankle on the uneven ground, Rachel would have danced a short jig. This was amazing, this was her big break, this was the best thing that had ever happened to her. Children would wear her uniform for Halloween! They would want to be her! They would use her code name—she had to think of a code name!—during recess, and adults would talk breathlessly of seeing her on the streets. People would then pay incredible amounts of money to see this hero, this icon, turn her formidable skills toward music. 

They had to start being superheroes. They had to start being superheroes _right now._

She looked up with a grin big enough to catch the moonlight. Surely she couldn’t be the only one who was this excited over the gift they’d been given. Tina was still sulking over her apparent power failure, but was still gamely trying to find them. Quinn was… oh! How exciting, Rachel thought. Quinn was creating a shard of ice in her hand and then letting it fall to the ground to shatter. Quinn had control over ice, just like Santana had control over fire! She would have to point out the similarity to them, if they hadn’t already noticed. They’d probably find it quite interesting.

"We need to organize," Rachel said. "Everyone! Everyone, please stop playing with your powers for a minute and listen to me!" She cleared her throat. "Everyone?"

Finn chuckled and rubbed her shoulder. "I think that can wait a couple of days, Rach. They're having a little too much fun right now."

She sighed. But they would be having _more_ fun if they considered ways in which to build upon each other's powers. Right now they were simply noise; they should come together like a symphony. "I suppose," she said. “And there are some other things we could plan in the meantime."

There was more to be done than simply practicing their powers, she could see that already. Becoming the next huge superheroic force on the block would be rather complicated, and she had _so_ many ideas of what to do next. Reading all those web pages had made their goals clear. It was a fortunate thing that all of this had happened during summer, when they had free time to prepare themselves. 

Finn was content to shoot random song lyrics into people's minds for target practice, and so she let him be. After a minute of searching she found where Kurt was practicing a single-arm handstand at the far side of the parking lot. He’d originally shown up in a new sweater, which Rachel thought nothing of. After all, she remembered one day with five outfit changes from Kurt. On that day he’d had _access_ to other clothes in his locker, though. Here, the change from that memorable sweater to a similar one with all the colors shuffled around had to be due to his powers. She wondered if he knew he’d done it.

Rachel said brightly, ”Kurt! Well, look at you. That's terribly impressive."

He bent a few inches further and then sprang to a standing position in one smooth motion. "I am never going to have to put up with... with anything again," Kurt said with a slow, confident manner. "Someone tries to push me around? I'll be able to twist out of the way and watch them break their fist on the wall. This is _so_ much better than I feared.”

"It's so exciting to hear that you're totally on board with this whole superhero plan!" Rachel enthused. "Because you will be a key component of—"

"No no," he said, holding up his index finger. It shook at her once. "No no. I am no longer terminally depressed, but I am not 'on board.' Just because I can handle myself if someone does come at me doesn't mean I want to go seeking out a fight. Superheroics involve flames and acid and way too many trips to the emergency room. With my history I am not up for seeing another person in a hospital bed. Including me."

She stomped her foot against the dirt. "Kurt, don't you want to make a difference in the world?"

"Yes," he said lightly. "Of course I do. I want to change hearts and minds. I want to become fabulously wealthy and write checks to politicians who dislike all the people I dislike. I don't want to 'make a difference' by stabbing people in the throat and then dying at nineteen." He arched an eyebrow at her. "Besides, have you seen what they all wear? Awful, all of it."

"That's actually kind of what I came to talk to you about," Rachel said delicately. "Because, well, if we're going to be a team beloved by millions, we'll need costumes."

Kurt stared at her flatly. 

"And I thought you could come up with them."

Kurt stared at her for a longer stretch, blinked, and kept staring.

"So," Rachel finished, "maybe you could just sort of forget about all of those dreams you had for your future, focus on being a superhero for a while, and make us all look good! Okay?"

He patted her cheek. "I'm starting to find your delusions strangely endearing," Kurt said before he vanished.

Rachel gasped and started probing the air in front of her. "Kurt! Kurt, you un...invisible yourself right now! We're not done talking! Ooh," she said and stormed her way to the nearest likely ear. "Kurt's not going to design our costumes," Rachel grumbled to Puck. "He has this idea that going into superheroics would be dangerous and unpleasant."

"Which is fair," Puck pointed out. She looked betrayed, and he continued, "Look, Rachel. Kurt's not on board with batting away explosives from the Green Goblin or whatever."

"So we just need to convince him!"

"...And Quinn's pretty iffy on everything, too. Have you looked at her? She is not happy about that ice. Brittany’s clueless. Mike just wants to fly around and is worried about his parents finding out; how are you going to get him to actually attack anything? Hell, Finn might have fun doing a stupid trick here and there, but earlier he was scared shitless about everything. Who knows what he’ll commit to? Tina’s still annoyed that she hasn't found her powers, and Artie keeps talking about making sex robots." With a gesture in the boy's direction, Puck continued, "Which, yeah, is the best idea I've heard from anyone, but it doesn't really sound like he's doing it to be a superhero."

"I would certainly hope not," Rachel said with an annoyed look at Artie. If he was determined to make money off his powers, he should at least focus on some of the other options he’d suggested. "I just can't believe that people aren't more excited about this!" She saw Finn talking to Tina, presumably trying to encourage her about finding her abilities, and sighed deeply. 

Puck's eyebrow popped up. "And why are you so into it? I don't remember you making a big production out of how your dream in life was to kick some ass." He tilted his head a bit and gestured to his arms. "Now, me...."

"As owners of these powers, we're obligated to help people with them! It's just the right thing to do!” He didn’t seem to be buying it, and so Rachel continued, “We have every possibility of being heroes on the level of the biggest names—"

"Oh," Puck said and started laughing. "Got it. Being a superhero equals being famous. Everything makes total sense now, never mind.”

"I. Well." Rachel harrumphed. "I also want to help people." And she did. It would be a very pleasant side effect.

“And are _you_ up for batting away explosives from the Green Goblin?” Puck asked. He cut her off when she began to immediately say yes. “Yeah, okay, so everyone and their dog knows who Spider-Man is, good for him. But when those things come flying at him, if he messes up _one time?_ ” Puck’s fist smacked loudly into his open palm. “Flyswatter. Done. Over with. You cool with being a smear on some rooftop?”

“I thought you said you were excited about this,” Rachel said quietly. That imagery was horrific.

“I am. Because I’d be up for facing those odds, once I figure out what I’m doing.” Puck gestured broadly at everyone else there. “But seriously, Rachel. Think about what a total mess we were in New York. And we were just trying to pick songs! You want to take _that_ team up against the big names?”

“We could be great, though,” Rachel said plaintively.

“We _could_ , if people actually get on board and want to do it. But we don’t wanna throw ourselves into the meat grinder before we’re ready. Just, you know… chill a little, Rachel.” Puck grinned. “Want to see if I can pick up Kurt’s car?”

“He’d kill you,” Rachel said and managed a small laugh. “I suppose you’re right. We do need to make sure we have a strong foundation in place. It’s one thing to fail at a singing competition; it’s another thing entirely to not dodge an explosive.”

Puck, though, seemed to ignore most of what she’d said. “He _would_ kill me,” Puck said with tremendous humor. “That’d be hilarious. His car’s a total trigger for him. I’m gonna do it.”

“Don’t you dare, we’re trying to work together,” Rachel said. Some part of her, though, was a little pleased: they had reached a point where even Noah Puckerman understood Kurt Hummel’s motivations. That had to be a good sign for all of them being able to work together as a team.

Kurt’s motivations.

Kurt’s reactions.

A smile spread across Rachel’s face like the Grinch. “Noah,” she said before filling him in on her plan, “come with me.”

A minute later she approached the now-visible Kurt again, Puck in tow. “I was wrong to try to force you into doing so much work for the team when you don't actually want to be _on_ the team," Rachel said sweetly. "I'm sorry."

"Apology accepted," Kurt said warily.

"So I'll just do it," Rachel continued with a smile.

"What?" Kurt asked with the same tone he would use for Rachel announcing that she intended to give him a lapdance.

"I have a crystal clear vision in mind for how we should look," Rachel said. She gestured ahead of her like she could picture their full team standing there. "The Golden Stars. We'll be covered in an array of them, overlapping like scales. Very shiny, very dashing." Kurt looked utterly horrified, and so she decided to add, "With a single glowing one on our chests. So it'll stand out as the logo."

Kurt gawked at her for a second longer, then turned to Puck. "You cannot seriously be willing to wear something with that description. It's like her vision of superheroes is pulled straight from the 1940s, and then it had dirty, wrong sex with Jem."

Puck shrugged. "If it sucks too bad, I'll just wear jeans and a ski mask."

"Oh my god,” Kurt muttered. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fine. Fine! I will handle costumes if you promise not to be involved at all, Rachel."

"Well," she said, forcing her lip out into a pout, "I really think we should have at least one arm apiece that's covered in stars—"

"No!" he said. "Mine. All mine. No touching!"

"If you insist," Rachel sighed, and let him storm away with a litany of complaints about how he had no idea how he'd gotten pulled into doing all of this. Once Kurt was safely away from them, she held out her hand at her side. Puck slapped her palm with his.

“He’s gonna kill you if he figures out what you did,” Puck said when Kurt was safely out of earshot.

“I’ll just have you lift his car to distract him if he tries,” Rachel countered.

“It’s a deal.”

* * *

The rest of their night passed in flashes. It was all too easy to lapse into daydreaming about their big, spectacular future. (Clearly it _would_ happen; only the minor details remained.) Rachel barely noticed events here and there as she pictured being handled the Congressional Medal of Honor on the same day as signing a record contract.

Santana and Quinn did notice the other’s complementary powers and both looked annoyed because of it.

Mercedes’ hands glowed like they had in her basement, but the energy died without anything more happening.

Puck lifted Brittany and Tina above his head and watched Brittany stay aloft when he lowered his hands. She giggled and made a swooping arc over the young corn, and then abruptly fell into the soft dirt. The green shoots around her exploded into feathers. Rachel shook her head and wondered what on _earth_ would cause that combination of powers; at least Kurt or Mike’s pairings made sense.

Speaking of Kurt, he looked continuously annoyed at how far he kept being drawn into the events around him. But the people there were quicksand and he just kept sinking further in. Soon Finn was bombarding him with song lyrics, Mercedes insisted that he try to sneak past her bubble shield, and Artie asked to borrow his cell phone for some new technological experiment. (Kurt said no.) Things couldn’t have gone better if she’d planned it.

“Hey,” Finn said some time later. “Look, Kurt and I need to head off before our folks wake up again. We’ll meet soon, right?”

“I’m sure we’ll have another opportunity to practice,” Rachel said. “Um. But with the security system, how are you going to get back inside?”

“Kurt says he has a plan,” Finn said. “I called it ‘a mission,’ like a superhero’s. And then he told me to shut up.” Finn made a pained expression. “I hope he eventually focuses on what he likes about what’s happening, or it’s going to be a real pain in the ass to be down the hall from him.”

Rachel squeezed his hand reassuringly and waved as they headed to the car. That prompted a steady stream of people saying they needed to get home. Quinn and Brittany piled into Mike’s car when he set off with Tina. Mercedes, upon finding out that she wasn’t too far from Puck, grabbed a ride with him so Artie wouldn’t have to make a second stop.

Taken from one perspective, it was encouraging. Two years ago, who would have foreseen these pairings? The cheerleaders and the football player would never talk with the quiet goth girl. Puck would have no use for Mercedes, let alone offering to drive her somewhere. They _would_ be a team. They would be a strong team. They would be a spectacular team.

They would be the _number one_ team, from world-saving performances to merchandise sales.

“Well,” Santana sighed, “let’s get this over with.”

And there was the last travel grouping that Rachel had been trying not to acknowledge. “Thank you very much for driving us, Artie,” Rachel said as she took shotgun and left Santana sprawling on the bench seat at the very back of the van. “I could have taken my car, but it’s good to conserve gas.”

He saw right through her, of course. “I totally don’t mind being the third wheel so you and Santana don’t have to talk to each other,” Artie said with a slight smirk as he turned on the engine, circled the parking lot, and set off down the driveway. “Besides, why would I turn down having two hot chicas in my ride on a Friday night?”

Santana called from the back, “Yeah, we’re not even close to being friendly enough to let you say that.”

“Noted,” Artie said as he turned onto the main road. The conversation died down and Rachel again resisted the urge to whine over the surely-painful night ahead. “Talk to you later,” he eventually said when he dropped them off at Rachel’s. “I’ll let you know if I come up with anything cool!”

The two girls watched his taillights vanish down the road until he turned a corner, then faced each other unhappily. Rachel began, “I think most people have pinned down a considerable portion of their powers. We can really start team-building in earnest. Don’t you think?”

“Are we really going to try to do this?” Santana asked her. “Look, I’ll just crash on your couch, head home when I get a call from my parents, and we never actually have to talk to each other in the meantime. Thanks for a place to sleep, but seriously. This is stupid enough already.”

It was tempting. It was _very_ tempting. They’d had their occasional moments of civility; Rachel had felt genuine friendship toward all of the auditioners before Nationals. (At least, after their solo competition had ended.) But their default setting was still very much turned to hostility and it would be much easier if she didn’t tempt fate. 

If this was going to work, though, everyone had to learn to work together. Lives might depend upon it. “I wouldn’t feel right inviting you in and then ignoring you, Santana,” Rachel said in what she thought was a terribly polite voice. “I really think we should talk. About our hopes, our dreams… our thoughts on exactly how skilled someone needs to be to take on the Green Goblin….”

Santana’s nose wrinkled. “Ugh, really? We can so skip all of that.”

“But it’s so important that everyone in the club become friendly. Close. We should nurture each other. Love each other!” Santana looked horrified and Rachel retreated to, “Try not to kill each other. …Can we at least go inside?” Rachel asked as she slapped a mosquito on her neck.

Santana agreed to that much, at least, and they headed for Rachel’s living room. “Seriously,” Santana said as she flopped on the couch. “I am one hundred percent fine with making sweet, sweet love to your television remote.” When Rachel hesitated, Santana said with annoyance, “That’s a joke.”

“Of course it is,” Rachel said like she’d never thought otherwise. She perched next to Santana, legs folded neatly under her, and tried her very best to maintain whatever connection she could. “How did your fire summoning go? It was very busy with everyone there. I didn’t really get a chance to track everyone’s progress.”

“Oh god, we’re actually talking,” Santana groaned, and then rolled her head to face Rachel. “Fine. I have no idea what I’m doing with these powers. I only managed to call fire, like, twice more. And one of those times I nearly wound up burning off Quinn’s shoes.”

Rachel sat up straighter, startled. “Was she all right?”

“Yeah,” Santana grumbled. “She put it out kind of on instinct. I guess she has ice powers.”

So that was how they’d discovered each other’s talents. “It is very challenging to control more, well… amazing powers like ours, isn’t it?” Rachel asked enthusiastically. “I’m sure you saw Kurt and Mike testing out their agility, or Puck crushing those rocks. Clearly, that’s all very easy to master. But Kurt’s outfit kept changing. Did you notice?”

“No,” Santana said. She looked slightly pained that Rachel was still talking to her.

“It was just details here and there,” Rachel said, waving it off. Of course she’d picked up on it; she had an wonderful eye for detail. “And Mike, well, someone had to pull him back to earth at least twice more. Maybe he should stay inside until he’s got a better handle on things. I suspect that ceilings will be his friends.”

Santana didn’t look completely hostile, so Rachel risked continuing with what she’d noticed about people’s powers. “Quinn seems to be able to summon ice reliably, but only as this little piece that she drops from her hand. I suppose your threat to her drove her toward more, but beyond that….”

“Yeah,” Santana said thoughtfully. “I guess it did.”

Rachel waited for her to continue, saw that she didn’t, and took up the reins again herself. “Finn tried to put lyrics into people’s heads, and he… usually succeeded,” she said delicately. “But if he got distracted, he wound up sending whatever else was on his mind.” Boys had _strange_ thoughts in the middle of fields. She supposed she should be glad he hadn’t been picturing her in her underwear. Instead, half the club had heard mission instructions about how the corn field around them would be filled with (presumably digital) zombies and they needed to choose their weapons. “Mercedes can only call her force field when something is coming at her, and she’s still not sure what her arms are doing when they glow. Brittany… lord only knows. Artie never knows what he’ll wind up making.”

“So you’re saying we suck?” Santana asked flatly.

“No! What I’m saying is that I see so much potential in all of us. The only powers that people seem completely comfortable with are like… faster running. Lifting heavy things.” Rachel’s smile was just a tad patronizing; she couldn’t help it. “Don’t you think it’s far more interesting to be able to call down a rain of fire? Or explode deadly foes with your voice?”

“Huh,” Santana said, and did really seem to consider that. “Yeah, okay. I like saying that I’m better than Puck. Or Mike or Kurt, but especially Puck. He’s being so annoying and weird.”

They were _bonding_. This was fantastic! If Rachel could bond with Santana, then certainly nothing was beyond the team’s reach. They would put their powers together, direct them as a single unit, and—

“Okay, are your parents asleep?” Santana asked. It took Rachel a second to realize she wasn’t talking to her. While she’d been daydreaming, Santana had pulled out her phone and had it next to her ear. “Good, change into your pajamas. No, not the frog ones, you know I hate those.” She saw Rachel staring at her with confusion and covered the speaker. “You mind? I’m on the phone.”

Oh, that was just perfect, Rachel thought as she wrinkled her nose and left Santana alone with a few quick words about guest supplies in the bathroom. God only knew who might be on the other end of that line, with an apparent taste for _frog pajamas_ , but she doubted they would have any clothing on for much longer. It would be much safer to simply retreat to her room.

Once she was safely within it, Rachel pulled out her own phone and texted Finn. _Did you make it inside without your parents realizing what you’d done?_

The answer came thankfully quickly. _yeh_

Oh, good! Finn and Kurt wouldn’t be grounded, then. _How?_

_i dont want 2 talk about it_

Well, an interesting story was certainly hidden there. Rachel wished him a good night, set aside her phone, and then settled down in front of her laptop. Although it was late, she wasn’t tired at all.

* * *

The next morning dawned full of promise. Rachel cheerfully made breakfast and called Santana in until she relented and came to the dining room. “I have to say, Santana, I am so excited about what might happen next.”

“With breakfast?” Santana asked groggily. She picked up a piece of toast and seemed confused as to what she should do with it; she must have just rolled out of bed. Setting it down, she then picked up a jar and squinted at the label. “Marmalade is an actual thing? Do you just have butter?” A tub of margarine was placed in front of her and she looked increasingly disappointed.

“Do you want some coffee?” Rachel theorized, and was quietly amused when Santana nearly bellowed a ‘yes.’ “Coming right up.” As she worked, she said over her shoulder, “I was busy last night.”

“So was I,” Santana said. She rubbed at her eyes a little more and seemed to wake up.

Ew. Rachel tried not to let herself think on that answer. “I mean, preparing for what our next steps should be. Let me go grab what I made while the coffee starts, all right?” Santana didn’t seem opposed to the idea. Before she could change her mind, Rachel hurried up the stairs and retrieved a stack of papers, and then returned downstairs to dig through a cabinet.

"I'm putting together workbooks for everyone," Rachel said as she pulled out her bookbinder. (She’d bought it in anticipation of presenting more sheet music to Mr. Schuester. She was positive that handing him a list of perfect Rachel Berry solos would look all the more impressive when they were in a booklet with a thematically-appropriate cover and a glittery gold coil spine.) "I really want everyone to be prepared for this."

She picked up the test sheets she'd printed out and reread them one last time for errors. The first part of each book held a historical overview of superheroes. She'd pulled selections from Wikipedia on the early years of the biggest teams, as well as some of the most notable events for specific heroes. Her friends would know everything from Genosha to Gwen Stacy. 

Next, she included an edited version of the powers list that Mike had found. There were so many resources that other teams could claim and theirs still lacked. Control over time, regeneration, electrical storms, physical phasing: the possibilities were endless. There was still a chance that more abilities lurked, and she felt it important that people keep an open mind toward new discoveries. She also included a few recent, minor stories on young teams similar to them. It would be instructive to spend some time studying how the media reacted.

The last half, naturally, was filled with worksheets.

She thought they were all terribly helpful. She'd come up with various exercises such as teaming up and attacking pebbles lobbed by the other partner, or writing short answer essays on what they would all do in certain heroic situations. Each question had point values assigned to it in the hopes of bettering themselves through competition. She would have to find a suitable prize, though, Rachel thought as she carefully threaded the coil binder into place. "There," she said proudly and presented her sample book to Santana. "These will be very helpful, I'm sure."

Santana stared at the cover, then looked up to Rachel and scowled. "We are not calling ourselves 'The Golden Stars.'"

Rachel's fists planted themselves on her hips. The costumes along that theme weren't a real proposition, but she had been serious about the name. "And do you have a better idea for what our team could be called?"

"Yes: not that." Santana's expression further soured as she got to the last half of the booklet. "I am not doing _homework_ on this. You cannot be serious."

"I am entirely serious, Santana," Rachel said. "We're sailing into very unfamiliar waters with these powers, and I think everyone would really benefit from some structured learning. As your captain—"

"Yeah, here's the thing," Santana said. "As our captains, you and Finn ruined our shot at the big leagues in New York. As our captains, Finn was late last night and you couldn't figure out what to do to really test people. So maybe you should shut up and stop trying to control everyone when you're clearly shit at getting good results."

The next time she saw Kurt, she was going to step on his foot for recommending that Santana stay with her. "Then who exactly would you suggest for a team captain, Santana?" Rachel said tightly. "You?"

"Let's see," Santana said, tapping her finger against her chin. "Me or Quinn in charge: the Cheerios go to Nationals and win, humiliate our enemies, dance on their graves, all that good stuff. You and Finn in charge: you sing shitty solos and lose competitions for us both times you go up on stage. You know what? Yeah. Let's go with me." She saw that a cup’s worth of coffee had brewed and stood to get it, smiling brightly all the while. “Got any milk?”

Rachel's jaw worked. "You're very welcome for being hosted after you almost burned down your house, by the way." But, like she wanted to take her rudeness to the next level, Santana didn't even acknowledge Rachel’s words. She simply typed something on her phone, pressed 'send,' and smirked. A few seconds later, Rachel's phone began to play 'The Bitch is Back.'

"Aw," Santana cooed. "You set a custom ringtone for me. I didn't know you cared."

With an annoyed sigh, Rachel checked her texts. A second later she shoved her phone back into her pocket and said, "We are not hunting down criminals in Columbus."

"Why not?" Santana asked lightly. "We're not going to go anywhere with these powers unless we really put them to the test. And it's not like Doctor Doom is going to be lurking around Ohio State. Rhino, maybe. He's totally minor league."

“I… wait,” Rachel said with frustration. “I spent all last night planning this. I know exactly what we’re doing next.”

“Yeah, so does everyone else: going to Columbus,” Santana said before crunching down on a mouthful of toast.

This was _unbelievable_. She had mapped out their entire path, down to the details of when they would need to hire a publicist! And Santana thought she could storm in with big, dramatic plans that did not align with that schematic? 

“You said it yourself,” Santana said with a shrug. “Being at risk made powers come out for people. Trial by fire, throw ‘em into the deep end. Otherwise we’re just wasting time like we did last night.”

But they didn’t even have costumes yet! Rachel checked her phone and groaned to see someone already questioning the orders. This would be a nightmare to sort out. _is santana in charge???_ Artie asked with clear concern. _bc pretty sure she’d set me on fire_

_We’ll work something out_ , Rachel promised him. Another text arrived from Artie. It was completely nonsensical and Rachel tilted her head ever-further as she tried to make sense of it.

_totally forgot w all the craziness but remind me to tell u about matt_

“Matt?” Rachel repeated blankly. But just as Artie had apparently been distracted from something about their old choirmate, so soon was Rachel. A flood of other texts began to stream into her inbox, and sadly, many of them sounded thrilled about the idea of taking their group to Columbus. Tina promised to help come up with a good cover story. Finn wanted to know why she and Santana had been talking without him. Quinn said to count her out. Puck wanted to know if he could throw a car as a weapon.

This was _so_ not in the plan.

And there was Santana, just smiling away at her as she kept eating her toast.

“I would love to sing you a song right now,” Rachel gritted out.

“I could always cook you something,” Santana said, unconcerned. “Look. Whoever the team wants to lead them, well, that’s who they’ll pick. Just step up and don’t suck.”

“I never ‘suck’ at anything,” Rachel snapped. 

“Wow,” Santana said. The last bite of toast disappeared. “Poor Finn.” And then, thankfully, her phone rang with a call from her father. With a quick note about how she was close enough to walk, she headed out the door.

More texts kept flying at Rachel. She rested her head in her hands and stared morosely at her perfect workbook full of perfect exercises. She’d still make all of the books for everyone on what would be _her_ team. And then people would have to appreciate how much better prepared she was for the leadership role than Santana. They’d _have_ to. It would all work out in the end.

When she stopped by Kurt and Finn’s to give them their workbooks, though, she still stepped on Kurt’s foot.


	7. The Cautionary Tale of Gwendolyn Stacy

"Hey, Mr. Hummel!" Mercedes said brightly as the door opened on a warm, cloudless Monday morning. 

Burt smiled gamely back at her. "Hey, Mercedes. Nice to see you." He gestured her inside and she entered with a comfort level just below family. There was no bothering with looking around or complimenting their house. She was well past that. "How’re your folks?"

"Good. Busy." Mercedes shrugged. "Sounds like Dad’s gonna have me helping out at the office a couple days a week, but I don’t mind."

"Cleaning teeth?" Burt asked dubiously.

"Gross, no," she laughed. "Filing papers and stuff."

"Doesn’t sound too bad," Burt said. "I’m having Kurt show Finn the ropes around the garage. Not expecting him to master everything in one summer, but he can help out with oil changes, tires, that sort of thing. Besides, it’s good stuff for him to know." He pointed at her. "You know how to change your tires, right? If you’re waiting on AAA, you could be on your way a lot faster sometimes if you just do it yourself. Kurt can show you, too."

"Of course I know," Mercedes lied. She was not _about_ to lug around a dirty tire with her bare hands. They seemed to abruptly cross that line between ‘polite small talk to catch up’ and ‘this is my son’s friend, not mine’ and she pointed at the stairs. "Is he…?"

"Yep, go on up. Your other friend is already here. Good to see you kids having fun. I’ll be out of your hair soon; can’t believe you guys came over so early."

Mercedes shot him one last smile and hurried upstairs. She _liked_ Kurt’s dad. It had always been comfortable coming over, and Carole was just as nice. It was one of the most welcoming homes she’d ever stepped into. She knew from complaints over occasional arguments that Kurt’s dad wasn’t perfect, but he seemed close to it. Her own dad was pretty awesome, too. They’d lucked out.

"Knock knock," she said as she arrived in front of Kurt’s closed door.

It opened and Tina stuck her head out just enough to peer up and down the hallway. "Okay, come in, hurry!"

"Really subtle, guys," Mercedes said wryly as she slipped inside.

"Oh, here," Kurt said as he passed her something. "I made this last night. Put this on the doorknob. This summer we’re supposedly working on a tribute to Gaga, Katy, Rihanna, and Nicki." He grinned slightly. "My dad didn’t know who they were, so I showed him pictures. I made sure to go for the brightest hair possible. I think they terrified him enough so he won't dare step inside while we’re working on anything. We really just need to worry about Carole for now; her shift is later."

She studied the custom door hanger that said "Music video appreciation society in progress: do not disturb!" and shrugged, then did as ordered. Once the door was closed again, she hopped on the bed and said excitedly, "Okay, so I cannot believe we’re actually making superhero costumes."

Kurt groaned and started digging through a mess of mismatched bags. "You and me both." As he worked, he began pulling his purchases out of those bags and scattering them across every flat surface within reach. Kurt had fallen off the radar all weekend. Apparently, he’d been finding every piece of cheap black leather clothing within driving distance.

"It feels like I raided every thrift store and consignment shop within a day's drive," Kurt said as he carefully selected a piece and pulled out the stitching on a sleeve. The jacket itself was in sorry shape and hideously out of date. Once he'd finished separating the jacket into component parts, and then splitting those up into flat sheets of leather, he began working on the signs of wear with a tin of black shoe polish. It wasn't a perfect match for the shade, but it really wasn't bad. By that point Mercedes could see the potential for repurposing the material into a costume. (A first, rough draft costume, anyway.) "I have a few more pieces coming in from eBay, too. For backup material."

"Wow, this'll be great!" Tina said as she held up a long black duster. "This is a huge piece of leather."

"Yeah, I found a few of those," Kurt said. "They'll work perfectly. I guess some local nerds finally gave up on their dreams of being Neo."

Tina giggled. For a while they simply sorted through the pieces. A few finds seemed workable as they were, and they were set aside. Most of the pieces needed to be pulled apart for a fresh start, though, and they worked on that task in companionable silence, slowly and carefully.

Hours passed. Any time one of them tried to speed up, Kurt chided them and told them that it was better to have good material to start with and that it would save them time during construction. Someone knocked on the door and they hid the most damning of the evidence. "Come in," Kurt said when he was confident that they looked passable. Finn peered around the opened door and he relaxed. "Did you get it?"

"Yeah," Finn said as he held up a bag with a local costume shop’s logo on the side. "All the brands you wanted."

"Perfect," Kurt said happily and grabbed the bag from him. "Thanks, Finn." His head tilted when he saw a number of other bags in Finn’s arms. "What else did you buy? Are those posters?" He grabbed the three and began unrolling them even as Finn protested, and then shot Finn a flat look.

Mercedes snorted when the subjects of the three posters were revealed: Emma Frost, She-Hulk, and Tigra. The women had all been captured at angles that best revealed their well-toned thighs and ample chests. "Really, Finn?"

"They’re super-famous, like Rachel wants to be," Finn mumbled as he rolled them back up. "It’s, um, research."

"Research for your penis?" Tina asked sweetly. Finn paled, mumbled something else, and slammed the door shut. She giggled and flung herself back onto the bed. "Oh my god, did you guys look through those giant workbooks that Rachel made for us?"

"Yes," Mercedes laughed. "And: wow."

"I hate to say it, but some of the articles weren’t bad," Kurt admitted as he started work on pulling out stitching on the last of the unworkable jackets. "I ignored the worksheets, but reading about some of the teams… it’s an interesting case study for the media."

"That couple on the Young Avengers is so cute," Tina cooed. Though she didn’t disagree out loud, Mercedes didn’t know if she’d call those boys ‘cute.’ The magic user was a grade-A hottie, but Big Green Baby Hulk wasn’t exactly her cup of tea.

"I can’t argue with you there," Kurt said reluctantly. "It’s good to see representation." Now that, Mercedes did agree with. She loved that their first leader was strong, black, and respected. It was the sort of thing that made her excited about what they were doing, even more than simply being famous. If they really could wind up on posters like the ones Finn had brought in… well, there were a lot of kids like her currently seeing a lot of heroes like Captain America and Emma Frost: blonde, pale underwear models. 

"Some of the articles were really sad, though," Mercedes said as she asked Kurt whether a pair of pants was good enough to use whole, and then started polishing its worn spots when he nodded. "Did you read that one on Gwen Stacy?"

"Yeah," Tina said, flinching. "Yikes."

"I didn’t go through everything, but you two look ready to slit your wrists," Kurt said. "What happened?"

"I heard Puck talking to Rachel about the Green Goblin," Mercedes said. "That’s probably why she grabbed the story. Well, he kidnapped this girl—Gwen—and took her to a bridge. Spider-Man went to save her. He started fighting the Goblin and the Goblin threw her off, so Spidey webbed Gwen so she wouldn’t hit the water. Except when he pulled her back up… she was dead."

"Ouch," Kurt said. "So all that time, he’d been trying to save a dead girl?"

"That’s the thing," Tina said. "It was the _Brooklyn Bridge_ , so there were a lot of people there. And when Gwen hit the bottom of that web strand and stopped… some people said they heard a snap."

"Oh my god," Kurt said when the implications hit.

"And the worst thing is," Mercedes jumped in, "is that from the way he reacted and rumors about being seen with her, and all that… some people are pretty sure that whoever Spider-Man really is, he was in love with Gwen Stacy. And in the middle of trying to save her life, he killed her."

"Wow," Kurt said after staring blankly at a spot on the opposite wall. "Well, that’s incredibly depressing. Thanks for the light summer reading, Rachel."

"There were other articles," Tina pointed out. "Alien invasions and stuff." She dug through her bag, pulled out her copy of the booklet and showed it to Kurt. 

"Right, Madripoor," he said dryly. "I remember watching all that CNN coverage of the alien invasion with Dad. It ended with the near-destruction of the world and some heroes impaled together. This is really upbeat stuff."

Mercedes and Tina shot each other long-suffering looks. Digging out her own book, Mercedes opened it and shoved an article into Kurt’s face. "And here’s when the Fantastic Four sent Doctor Doom running back to Latveria," she said. It was a nice, bright, simple story where the good guys won and the world as a whole wasn’t threatened. "And again, and again, and… wow, he must really hate those guys," Mercedes mused as she flipped to yet another story about how Reed Richards and company had emerged victorious.

"We should keep working," Kurt said. He didn’t sound convinced.

Although Kurt was being a little annoying, Mercedes got where he was coming from. The mortality rate for superheroes was sky-high. Mercedes was far more enthused about the idea than him or Mike, but Rachel was too far on the other end of the commitment scale. Truth be told, Santana’s plans for testing the waters of Columbus seemed more appealing than Rachel’s immediate goals of world domination, not to mention safer. Superheroes did seem to pop back up after a few years, but dying had to hurt in the meantime. (Plus, the whole thing played around in theological waters that left her uncomfortable. "Just not dying in the first place" definitely seemed to be the better option.)

Three ringtones interrupted their work and they all checked their phones. "Rachel has another assignment for us," Kurt recited dryly. "We’re supposed to pick our superhero names. And she’s sent reference sites to us for inspiration. How _thoughtful._ I love that girl, but the gulf in our opinion over this whole hero thing could form its own hurricane system."

"Ooh," Mercedes said. "This’ll be fun."

"Maybe for you guys," Tina groused. "You know what powers you have."

"Maybe for Mercedes," Kurt said. "Haven’t you been paying attention to my dramatic protests? I still don’t want to have anything to do with this."

"Yeah. We’ve so noticed, trust us. Then why are you making all these costumes?" Tina asked. "And coming with us to Columbus on top of that? It's not like you normally follow Santana's orders."

"Well, for the first question: you should have heard the horrible things you were going to be forced to wear. As my friends, you deserve better." Kurt looked more annoyed as he continued, "As for the second point, Rachel is committed to throwing herself into danger."

"So you want to protect her, since you’re a ‘badass ninja?’" Mercedes said with a grin.

Kurt rolled his eyes. "No, since I realize perfectly well that Rachel can take care of herself. Finn doesn’t, though, and is going along to be her big, strapping hero."

"Oh," Tina said knowingly. "So you’re tagging along to protect brain boy Finn."

"That’d be it." Kurt squinted at a jacket that wasn’t too hideous, so far as a bargain basement find went. "I think this might be the right size," he mumbled as he looked for his measuring tape and began checking its dimensions. "Yeah," he concluded when he double-checked his results against a computer printout. Mercedes recognized it; he’d set it up originally for their Gaga costumes, when most of the singers had pitched in to make them. It had some of the club’s measurements. "This should fit Santana as-is. Um, let’s do something interesting with the front and then try to make pants, I guess. She can be our prototype. Whatever we get working for her, we can just duplicate."

"Makes sense," Tina said. "It’ll save time to make everything identical, right?"

"Right," Kurt said. "And as the sole person with a sewing machine capable of handling leather, who knows very well that you two are only temporary help…."

"You want to save time so you’re not pulling a whole bunch of all-nighters," Mercedes finished with a grin. "We get you. What do you need me to do?" She nodded as he showed how to mark the cutting lines for the pants, and then tried her best to duplicate the technique. "So, what’re you going to call yourself?" she asked as she drew white dotted lines in what she hoped was the shape of Santana’s legs. These things were looking _tight._ She’d have to give herself more leeway. Not that Ohio didn’t deserve a hero as smoking hot as Mercedes Jones would be in a skintight pair of leather pants, but they were heading into summer. Being smoking hot was great and all, but she didn’t want to chafe. Chafing was not heroic.

(Of course, that didn’t make her give Santana’s pants any more room.)

"I don’t know," Kurt groaned. "So many of them have completely ridiculous names. And the few good ones are already taken. I’d just skip the whole thing if I didn’t think Rachel would start calling for ‘Our Stubborn Teammate Who Refuses To Name Himself Properly.’ In full. Every time."

Tina looked over from trying to make a formal pattern. "According to this, we’re supposed to check our names against this superhero wiki to make sure there’s not an active hero using it. I guess that makes sense." She paged to the next note. "Um, fictional characters are okay, if we have to."

"Can I suggest ‘Poison Ivy’ for Santana?" Kurt asked brightly.

Tina giggled. "No."

Mercedes giggled, too. Santana would kill them if she heard that they wanted her to name herself after an annoying itch. 

"You know," Tina said as she paged through one of the websites Rachel had recommended, "my dad says those companies started up so they wouldn’t have to deal with the real superheroes’ lawyers. If they tell stories and make movies about ‘Superman’ living in ‘Metropolis,’ no one can sue them if they make a hero look bad."

"Or a supervillain won’t kill the writers if _they_ look bad," Kurt countered.

"Good point," Tina said. "In that case, I’d rather make the good guy look stupid and get sued. But who’d want to watch a bunch of movies where the villains always win?"

"Yeah," Mercedes said as she watched Tina scroll through the wiki. "That’s no fun. Good guys always gotta win in the end." Of course, they got kicked around first, but she chose not to mention that. "Um. I hate to say anything, Tina…."

"I know, I know," Tina said as she dropped her phone against the bed and stared at it sadly. "I can’t really pick a name until I know what I can do."

Kurt patted her on the arm, careful not to get the pins he was holding anywhere close to her skin. "I’d give you mine if I could."

"Ugh, don’t taunt me," Tina whined. "Do you know how awesome it’d be to have illusion powers? I could walk into school wearing patent leather and lace from head to toe, and actually be in my sweats." 

That sounded fantastic, Mercedes thought wistfully. Force fields might have a real advantage in a fight, and… whatever it was that she did with her arms probably had some effect if she let it build up a little more, but both of those were pretty limited in their application. Kurt could make whatever he wanted look like whatever he wanted. He never had to do his hair. He could be wearing any piece of clothing on the planet. He could… she caught something in his expression and lunged across the bed.

"No!" Kurt almost shrieked, and laughed as he tried to bat her away from his intricate shirt and its multitude of buttons. He’d paired it with leather wristbands and jeans so tight that they wrinkled when he sat down. It wasn’t an outfit designed for comfort.

The pajamas that she actually _felt_ when she touched him were awfully comfortable, though. "You cheater," Mercedes said. "Kurt Hummel cheated on his wardrobe. What is wrong with the world? I bet the sky is green right now."

"We’re not even going outside!" Kurt tried to argue as Tina felt his leg and gasped similarly. "I’m just saving my more delicate pieces that require dry cleaning, and… and I’m still not happy about having these powers. Just so you know."

"Uh huh," Mercedes drawled. "We got all dressed up to come over here and _you_ are sitting in your jammies."

"I am putting off a trip to the dry cleaner’s," Kurt said haughtily, "and that’s just all there is to it. I spent money on gas and ugly leather clothing. I can’t afford the cleaner’s."

"Hey!" Carole said from downstairs. "Kurt, a package came for you!"

Kurt shot them a dark look when they both cleared their throats pointedly. "Stop it, this is also for the costumes. I still need to save on dry cleaning. And besides. I love these pajamas." And then he was gone, probably in a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers.

"Okay, now that the big fun-sucking void is out of the room," Tina said as she leaned over, "seriously, what does it feel like to be able to call on superpowers?"

Mercedes giggled. "So freaking cool. Something comes at me and just… zap!" She wiggled her fingers. "I’ve got this magic bubble around me. I want to be able to learn how to control it, though. I looked up more on the Invisible Woman after Artie kept talking about her and she’s _so cool._ She can have her fields up all the time if she wants, and have people inside them… it’s pretty great."

"Ugh," Tina mock-whined and flopped against the pillows. "I am so jealous. I want… I don’t know what I want. Stretchy arms! Precognition! Healing factor!" She sat abruptly up. "Hey, maybe that’s it! I never tried cutting myself, maybe I have a healing factor! Of course we’d never test for that, and it’s something that wouldn’t show up on its own!" Mercedes looked on with anticipation as Tina grabbed one of the pins out of Kurt’s kit, raised it high, and then brought it down into the pad of her thumb.

"Ow," she said after that as a droplet of blood beaded and stayed there. Tina stuck her thumb in her mouth and sucked at the wound that was clearly not healing.

As Mercedes grimaced in sympathy, Kurt returned with a small box in his hands. "Did I miss something?" he asked as he saw Tina.

"Tina, it turns out, does not have a healing factor," Mercedes told him.

"Oh my god," Kurt groaned. "Tina, stop! It’ll come when it comes, and if it doesn’t, well, then you don’t run the risk of being locked up and experimented upon like the rest of us. What a tragedy. And pass me those scissors." When they were placed in his hand, he carefully slit open the tape on whatever he’d ordered and revealed a tightly-packed shipment of masks.

"Cool!" Mercedes said and claimed one. They were all identical: small black domino masks that would fit neatly around their eyes without losing much of their peripheral vision. She pressed it against her face and frowned when it fell off upon being released.

"Are those really going to hide who we are?" Tina asked dubiously.

"One, Santana has us shipping ourselves over to Columbus. We’re not being stupid enough to think that these will shield us from the people we know," Kurt said as he read the provided instruction sheet. "And two, the only mask options around here were for cheap plastic Halloween things with elastic bands. I had to order from a superhero supply store in Brooklyn, and trust me, fast shipping was _not_ cheap. Full-head masks were not in the budget."

"Fair enough," Mercedes said as she pushed it against her face again and watched it fall back to the bed. "…Okay, but maybe elastic bands would be a good idea after all, I’m just saying."

"For the first step," Kurt read off the instruction sheet, "we need to mold the mask to each ‘hero’s’ face." He frowned slightly as he hit the points that followed and then headed for his bathroom with a mask in hand. 

"I love that there’s actually a ‘superhero supply store,’" Tina said as Kurt rummaged for something. She could hear water running, and then him shoving things around inside drawers.

"Here, Mercedes," Kurt said as he returned and held out a damp mask to her. "Apparently you have to soak them first, and then you press them on."

She tried that and felt it mold to her facial structure in a way the dry one hadn’t. Kurt whipped out a hairdryer, plugged it in, and told her to close her eyes. Warm air blasted her face, growing uncomfortable, but then she could feel the mask pull in tight and secure like it had suctioned on. The dryer clicked off after a few seconds more and Mercedes felt at her face. "Is that how it’s supposed to go?"

Kurt leaned in close and peered at her. "I think so. Is it on? I had Finn pick up some spirit gum in case it needs help sticking."

Mercedes pried a little at the edge of her mask and shook her head when it didn’t budge. "No, feels pretty secure." She glanced at a mirror and grinned at the sight: a mask like hers was pretty much Instant Hero, Just Add Water. She tried prying at it again and frowned. "It... comes off, right?"

Tina scooped up the instructions. "Yeah, it says you just need to pull. Expect to feel some resistance." 

Trying again, Mercedes felt it come loose with a rush of relieved pressure. It really did feel like an oversized, glossy black suction cup had been on her face. "Huh," she said, turning the mask around to study it. It held her shape once it had been set: she could see the hollow of her eyes and bridge of her nose. Her skin, tender immediately after it came loose, was already returning to normal. "These guys know what they’re doing."

"I want one, I want one!" Tina exclaimed and grabbed the mask Mercedes had first played with. She retreated into the bathroom, and soon hopped back on the bed with the damp mask on her face.

"Don’t lie, you think this is interesting," Mercedes said to Kurt over the rush of the hair dryer.

"I think they’re a necessary precaution and that’s it," he said back.

"Then why’d your attention wander?" Mercedes asked, pointing at him.

Kurt looked down at himself and groaned when he saw that his carefully-constructed illusory outfit had vanished. He was in his pajamas for all to see. While they were _nice_ pajamas, he was clearly embarrassed to suddenly be in them. His cheeks were red; he was forgetting to illusion those, too. "Oh god," Kurt muttered. His outfit flashed through a dozen variations before he seemed happy with one, or perhaps it simply took that long to settle when he was flustered. "This never happened, okay?"

"At least you didn’t accidentally imagine yourself naked!" Tina added with a giggle.

A moment later, Kurt’s cheeks darkened even further. He stood mechanically up, walked into the bathroom, and shut the door.

"We didn’t look!" Mercedes yelled after him.

"I looked," Tina said.

"Well, so did I," Mercedes hissed, "but we’re not supposed to tell him that!"

"I am not coming out of this room until you two are gone!" he said. 

Tina rolled her eyes. "We swear we didn’t look!" she said, this time loud enough for him to hear. "Kurt, come back out. We have costumes to make!"

"I clearly can’t design costumes and make costumes and talk to you and be worried about everything and keep an outfit in place all at the same time!" He paused. "I should probably get dressed."

Another voice joined him. "Dude, get out, I need to use the bathroom."

"I cannot go back into my room, Finn! Not unless you go chase out Tina and Mercedes."

"Why?" Finn near-whined. "Come on, I have to pee."

"Because they’re playing mind games and trying to get me to look naked in front of them!"

After a short pause, Kurt yelped. Finn made a similarly startled noise and groaned, "Oh god. Fine! I’ll go use another bathroom! Just… stop it!" He was probably covering his eyes, Mercedes thought with amusement, and tried not to burst out laughing when Kurt opened the door just far enough to poke his head through.

"So there’s definitely a slight issue when I get flustered and distracted," Kurt said. His cheeks still blazed pink. "I seem to be a little open to suggestion."

"Good thing you weren’t trying to do multiplication tables in your head in Rachel’s basement," Tina said. "Or you could have given everyone quite a show."

"He wouldn’t have to be naked, Tina," Mercedes pointed out. "He could just be in that outfit from Black Swan."

"Ooh!" Tina said. "Emma Frost’s strappy white thing."

"Prince Naveen," Mercedes said dreamily. "He was so hot."

"When I was little I had this totally weird crush on Jack Skellington," Tina confided to her.

"And then he could be naked again," Mercedes said with a big grin in Kurt’s direction.

Kurt narrowed his eyes at both of them. "I am not going to give you the satisfaction of knowing if any of those worked on me."

Mercedes studied him. "It was Emma’s."

"I hate you. Pick out some clothes for me and pass them through the door."

Once he reluctantly returned and Mercedes and Tina finished lying that they hadn’t looked at all, they worked in silence that was clearly easier on their end than his. But eventually Kurt relaxed, and although Mercedes occasionally noticed a brooch or scarf appearing on his outfit, he stayed mostly static. 

"I hope this doesn't blow up in our faces," Kurt finally said.

"What, the costumes?" Mercedes asked without looking up from the article printouts. (Kurt had grabbed some pictures of the X-Men's outfits—black leather for _days_ —and they were a good guideline.)

"Everything. Especially Columbus. I don't want to go, Mike doesn't, Brittany's iffy, Quinn isn't...."

"Quinn's really not going?" Mercedes asked, frowning.

"Sounds like it," Tina said.

"And besides Quinn... half of you are going because you want fame and fortune, and I think the others are just going because we're worried about the first half." Kurt shook his head as he glanced at Santana's jacket and tried to mimic its general design for a second one. "It's a recipe for very bad things happening."

"I'm not doing it for fame and fortune," Mercedes said. She saw Kurt's skeptical look and said, "Okay, not totally. Superheroes actually _help_ people, you know? That's cool. Why not have your face on a t-shirt for something that really matters, you know?"

"There are ways to help people that are a lot less bloody," Kurt countered. He seemed to sense her reaching the end of her rope and added, "Can we drop it? I'm going, okay? I'm going, I'll contribute, I want everyone to make it out of things safely. That's as much of your way as you're going to get. You can't talk at me until I change my mind."

"Fair enough," the girls said together. They went back to work.

"Hey, did that sticky stuff I bought worked?" Finn asked later, poking his head out from the bathroom.

"Oh, we didn’t use it," Kurt said with a gesture to the costume shop bags Finn had brought earlier. "These masks are impressive, I have to admit. They don’t need spirit gum at all."

"Great," Finn said. "I’m so glad I got up early and ran over there for you." Kurt smiled apologetically.

"Check out how cool we look, though!" Tina said with excitement as she pressed her mask against her face. After a second of resistance it clung tightly to her skin, and she lifted her hands above her head.

"Wow," Finn said, genuinely impressed. "You put that one thing on and you do look like a superhero."

"That’s totally what I thought!" Mercedes said excitedly, and held up her hand for him to high-five it. When Finn recognized the building anticipation in the room, he allowed himself to smile and ran over to slap their hands together. "You should take some lessons from him, Hummel," Mercedes said pointedly.

Kurt let out a pained groan. "Stop, stop! I thought we dropped this! Haven’t you been listening? I just want to make it to my freshman year of college without being a tragic statistic. Or having any of my friends be tragic statistics. Or any of the people around me that I care about—"

"We get the idea," Mercedes said dryly. "Show Finn your mask." 

When Kurt gave in and put his on, Finn’s eyes sparkled. Mercedes putting hers on nearly drove him to jump up and down like a little kid at Christmas. "I want one!" Finn said. "Where’s mine?"

"Go soak it in the sink," Kurt told him, handing it over.

They took their masks off after a little more revelry; Carole had left for work, but it wouldn't do any good for a parent to surprise them with an unexpected return. Still, even as the feeling faded from her skin, Mercedes felt suited up for action. They had clear tasks ahead of them: making costumes, planning alibis for their trip, picking codenames. 

But she'd heard Kurt's words floating through the night air when he was arguing with Rachel, and knew she had another task ahead of her: changing hearts and minds.

* * *

Sharper potential dangers lurked around those duties. When they packed up their costumes after a first day of work, that danger had to come before codenames or pep talks.

Steel bleachers during football practice weren’t Mercedes’ typical hangout. Any bleachers weren’t her thing, really, but hard, dirty, metal ones out in the mid-afternoon sun? They had to be among the worst of some across-the-board bad options. If she didn’t have her friends with her, she might well have blown off her task after the first half hour, despite the danger they all faced of being discovered. It wasn’t like the boys on the field would _not_ accidentally use their powers thanks to them being there. 

At least for the first day after their powers discovery, everyone had agreed via text messages that having outside observers would be a good thing. With how hard their coach pushed them, Finn, Mike, and Puck might not even realize they were screwing up. Now, out in the early summer heat and humidity, Mercedes wondered what they were supposed to actually do if Mike started floating above the rest of the Titans.

Kurt had brought a parasol and didn’t care one bit what the football team thought about him. Mercedes and Tina positioned themselves to take advantage of its angled shade as the sun roamed across the sky. "So far," Kurt said with clear relief as he watched Finn direct the team on drills, "so good. I think he’s very believable as a non-telepath, don’t you?"

Tina’s eyes focused exclusively on Mike. "Don’t start flying," she said quietly. "Don’t start flying, don’t start flying." Puck stuck close to Mike when the drills allowed it, under strict orders to tug Mike back to the dirt if the boy ever started inching upward. The two of them occasionally ran too fast, though, and would have to pull themselves back with an awkward overcorrection that had teammates eying them. 

Still, it had only been a few days of practicing with their powers. They’d probably settle into things. Kurt’s physical abilities already came naturally to him, but even beyond the hilarity of his outfit changes, he’d mentioned worrisome headaches if he tried to push his illusions very far. Mercedes still felt about a million miles behind what Sue Storm could achieve with her force fields. And poor Tina still had no idea what, if anything, she could do. 

Sam ran past the bleachers, saw them, and waved. His smile practically sparkled in the sun. Mercedes felt her cheeks grow warm and waved back, only to realize that Tina and Kurt were cluelessly following suit. Letting his gaze linger on her for a few seconds longer, Sam then smiled again and ran to join his teammates when Finn called for a new drill.

"It is going to be so hard to hide this from people," Tina groaned. 

"I know," Kurt said sadly. "My first reaction—when it seemed to be only Finn—was that we should tell our parents. And I still sort of want to. I know it just has the potential to absolutely blow up in our faces. I mean, my dad might realize that we’d be headed for some lab and keep his mouth shut. But am I right? Would he really? And would everyone else?"

Mercedes frowned. Yeah, they couldn’t count on all of those parents to do what their kids asked of them, rather than trying to make decisions in their best interest. "Quinn’s mom’d probably do what _she_ thought was best for her," she admitted, thinking back to some of the conversations they’d had during Quinn’s pregnancy. Some of them had rocks to lean upon; others weren’t so lucky.

"And it just takes one person talking to the cops or the hospital," Tina said. "Then we’re not only dangerous, we’re dangerous and trying to hide it. Yeah, that’d look great."

"Well, you wouldn’t be in trouble," Mercedes said. "You don’t even know what your powers are." Tina tried to smack her across the side of the head and Mercedes giggled. She didn’t know why Tina was so worried; they’d show up when they showed up. There was no way that she was the only exception in their group, just no way.

After Tina had finished glaring at her, Mercedes turned to Kurt and reluctantly continued, "And you know… it’s not just our parents that we can't talk to about this."

"I know," he said. He looked utterly despondent. "Believe me, I know perfectly well that I _can’t_ tell Blaine. But I also feel like I should warn him in case I take off a hat one day and he’s surprised by a set of horns. It has to be so much easier dating someone inside the group, Tina."

Mercedes felt awkwardly at her forehead. She knew Kurt was at the very top of the list for being paranoid over changes in their physical appearances. It’d be nice if he would be a little less specific about what he was worried about, though; he was making everything far too real. 

Tina patted Kurt on the shoulder. "Secret identities are pretty standard for superheroes, right?"

"Ugh," he mock-cried. "Don’t call me that. I am simply Finn’s babysitter in a domino mask."

"And a leather catsuit. That’s into pretty weird babysitter territory."

"Still," Kurt said. "Don’t use the S-word."

Tina smiled in amusement for a few beats more, then turned her attention back to the boys on the field. "There’s someone else that we have to worry about."

"Believe me," Kurt said as they watched Puck jog. He’d had a ridiculous smile like a lottery winner's from the very first minute of practice. It was a wonder no one had found out his secret already. "I know that, too. I can keep my mouth shut around Blaine. But is Puck _really_ going to be able to resist showing off for Lauren? He loves his powers."

Puck saw them and started grinning as he ran by. His smile lingered warmly over their group much like Sam's had, and Mercedes turned to see if Lauren had popped up out of nowhere. No, strange. Puck hadn't been looking right at her, at least; it would have been just her luck for his weirdass flirting to come back just when she finally had a boyfriend. She turned back to the field and he'd already moved on.

"Look at him," Kurt said wryly, shaking his head. "He can't even resist showing off for _us._ "

Something seemed weird, but before Mercedes could say anything she heard Tina suck in a huge gasp. Mike had thrown himself into the air to catch a pass... and then he came back down to earth. They all relaxed and refocused on the exercises at midfield.

Kurt checked his phone with surprise when I'll Cover You started playing. "I didn't realize how late it had gotten," he said as he answered the call. "Hey," he said. Happiness mingled with nerves and Mercedes knew exactly who it had to be. He'd mentioned that Dalton's classes ran later than theirs. Blaine was in the midst of finals, which was a convenient distraction from the craziness swirling around New Directions. "How'd English go? Oh, come on, all that tuition and you had to hand-write your essays? I happen to know for a fact they have good computer labs there."

Tina and Mercedes smiled at each other. It was so good to see Kurt happy like that. Of course, it would be nice if Mercedes could reveal she was in the same position. Sam jogged by again and she forced herself not to wave.

"At Finn's football practice," Kurt answered to the apparent question. "Oh, just... giving him some support."

Tina grabbed the phone. "And we're making sure Sue doesn't kill the football team and burn their bodies as a blood offering," she added with a glance to another part of the field, where the squadron was going through warm-ups. "Hi! It's Tina, by the way."

Kurt snatched back his phone and rolled his eyes tolerantly. "Blaine, I just put you on speaker."

"Hi, Blaine," Tina and Mercedes both cooed. "We love you."

"Hi, girls," he said wryly. "I'd hate to interrupt your blood offering patrol, but can I steal Kurt in an hour or so?"

"You have to study for history tomorrow," Kurt said so quickly he nearly tripped over the words. "You have to go home and study all evening. We can't see each other until your finals are over, remember?" 

"Will you excuse us for a sec?" Mercedes asked sweetly and covered the phone with her hand. "Kurt Hummel, you listen to me. You are dating this boy and you are going to go spend time with him and like it. You were way too twitchy just then, you sounded like you were trying to cover up an affair or something!"

Kurt frowned and seemed to review his words. Then he shook his head and said intently, "But Mercedes, I keep changing my outfit. Remember? Even when I got dressed I still added things here and there. What would I tell him?"

Tina considered that and then took the phone from Mercedes. "Hey, Blaine?" she asked, glancing at Kurt. "What do you say about Mike and I taking the two of you out to celebrate the end of your finals, okay?"

That still left Kurt looking worried, and so Tina covered the phone again just long enough to whisper, "It's like what we're doing here, okay? We'll be lookouts for any problems. We can try to notice any changes before he does." When Kurt still hesitated, she asked, "What, are you just never going to see him again?"

"Of course not," Kurt said.

"Great!" Tina said and uncovered the phone. "Blaine, that's a yes on me and Mike taking out the two of you. But you have to pass all your finals first."

"Do we have any choice in the matter?" Blaine asked good-naturedly.

"No," Tina said. "Not really."

"I'd just go with it," Kurt agreed. Mercedes was relieved to see that, under some annoyance, his smile looked genuine. "I just really want you to do well on your finals and I know this semester was kind of hectic. I can give you up for a week if it means you'll be headed toward As." His words sounded convincing, but he must be in the midst of emotional turmoil. A half-dozen plaid patterns flashed across his pants as he spoke. He clicked off the phone's speaker, brought it back to his ear, and smiled. "Love you, too. Go study."

He clicked off the phone, leaned back, and clunked his head against a hard metal seat. "Ow." Tina rubbed his shoulder and he looked at her balefully. "You'd better be ready to catch any slip-ups." Then, with a dramatic sigh, he sat up and checked his skin tone in a compact mirror.

"We'd let you know if you were turning green," Mercedes said. "Seriously. Stop worrying."

"I know," he said, but then pulled out his compact again and pulled his eye open wide. Apparently he trusted them to notice skin tone, but not if he started getting creepy Gambit eyes or something.

Mercedes shook her head and watched the boys on the field. They seemed to have everything under control. Glancing over to the cheerleaders, she saw Santana also in fine shape. And Brittany wasn't randomly forcing Sue to dance the rhumba or turning her into a potted plant, so that was probably a good sign. "I think we're going to be able to do this, guys," she said, allowing herself to hope.

"Make it through this week?" Tina asked. Mike ran by and grinned right at her; she waved cutely back.

"Make it through everything." Yeah. They'd do it. They'd have their real costumes with their real masks, and they were going to be real superheroes. Powers would come under control. Romances would work out. And no one would turn green.

All that was left was talking to one more person.

* * *

"Mercedes," Quinn said uncertainly as she opened the door. "I didn’t expect to see you."

"Guess you wouldn’t have," Mercedes said. After her goodbyes to Kurt and Tina, she'd set off driving for the Fabrays without sharing her plans. "Can I come in?"

Though she hesitated, Quinn then nodded and stepped back to let the door swing open. "Of course."

Mercedes had never been inside Quinn’s house. It was nice and orderly, which matched the image Quinn tried so hard to portray to the school: the perfect WASPy princess. Their friendship had stalled not too long after Quinn moved back home, and so she’d never verified that the stage set matched the acting. "Hi," she said when she saw Quinn’s mother emerge from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. "I’m Mercedes."

"Mercedes," Judy said with faint familiarity. Her eyebrows rose abruptly. "Oh. Are you the girl who let my Quinny stay with you?"

"That was me," Mercedes said a little uncomfortably. It wasn’t exactly the high point of Quinn’s life, being kicked out like that. If it were her, she wouldn’t want her mom to talk about it. A quick glance at Quinn told her that she was right; Quinn looked tightly withdrawn. Desperately wanting something else to talk about, she said, "Um, your house is really nice."

Judy smiled. It was strained, genuine but tired. "Thank you so much. Why don't you go to Quinn's room? I can bring you girls something. It's so nice to see you with a friend over, Quinn. What would you like?"

"You don't have to, Mom," Quinn said.

"But I'd like to bring you some snacks. You never have friends over."

"Whatever we have, then," Quinn said. She sounded embarrassed. "Come on, Mercedes. My room's down this hall."

"Seriously, your house is nice," Mercedes said when they had settled inside Quinn's room. She was perched on the edge of some old rocking chair with a floral cushion. Even though it was spotlessly clean, it gave the impression of being filled with three generations' worth of dust.

"So's yours," Quinn retorted like Mercedes had said something wrong.

Okay, clearly she was in the middle of something. And trying to fumble her way without a map probably wouldn't work, so Mercedes figured she might as well just be honest. At least then, if she screwed up, she'd have done it her way. "I don't know why you stopped being my friend," Mercedes said simply and waited for the fireworks.

"Neither do I," Quinn said just as baldly.

Mercedes blinked. She really hadn't expected that.

"I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I've been doing all year. And now we had all of _this_ happen to us, and I don't even know what I am," Quinn said with a dramatic gesture to the mirror. "Did Santana send you here to talk to me?"

"No. I came on my own." Quinn Fabray wasn't exactly forthcoming. For her to just dump all those words out like that... she probably _wanted_ someone to talk to. Mercedes considered everything she'd heard before asking, "So... Santana and Brittany don't come over?" Quinn shook her head and Mercedes frowned again. The three girls seemed close, but maybe it was an 'outside the house' sort of friendship.

Well, she might as well just keep plowing forward blindly. "Why aren't you coming with us?" Mercedes asked.

Quinn laughed bitterly. "To do what? Do you really think we're going to make a name for ourselves by wandering around a city, looking for trouble?"

"I guess we won't know until we try. And Rachel's the one who wants to make a name for herself," Mercedes said. The way Quinn flinched when she said the name 'Rachel' said there was still a lot of bad blood there. "Some of us just want to figure out what we even can do now."

"Yeah," Quinn said, turning to look out the window. "That would be nice."

The door swinging open interrupted Mercedes' response. Miniature rice cakes and carrot sticks greeted them, along with two bottles of what promised to be zero-calorie iced tea. Gross. She didn't need pizza or cookies, and carrots were actually pretty tasty, but who bought rice cakes on purpose? Flavored styrofoam was not a snack. She'd probably rather eat the real stuff; at least then it wouldn't go into a landfill.

"Thanks, Mom," Quinn said as Judy placed the tray on her dresser.

"Welcome, dear," Judy said with a smile. Before she left, she tucked an out-of-place lock of hair behind Quinn's ear.

"So how'd your mom take it when you came home with short hair?" Mercedes asked to get the conversation moving again.

"She didn't like it," Quinn shrugged. "She said a lot of things about how she supposed it worked with 'my bone structure,' but she thinks girls in high school should have long hair. I look thirty, apparently."

"Then a lot of thirty year olds would want your moisturizer secrets, girl," Mercedes said and Quinn managed to smile. "Look. Ever since this broke I've been dealing with Kurt, and he's... you know, he surprised me. I expected him to be all over this. I expected him to be like Rachel. But I guess it makes sense. We got those workbooks and some of the superheroes in those stories use their real names. But now that I think about it, it makes sense that Kurt wouldn't. He's already had his mom die and his dad came close, too. And he doesn't want to be famous for being someone else, behind a mask. He already has his big dreams for the future."

She waited for Quinn to speak up and continued when she didn't. "Rachel—yes, I mentioned her name, stop making that face—probably thinks she can have everything work magically out. We've been working on the costumes and we've got masks. But I bet she doesn't even think she needs one."

"And Santana just wants to be in charge because Finn and Rachel were," Quinn said knowingly, shaking her head. "You all are going to be lucky if you don't wind up dead."

"Yeah. That's something else Kurt said. He doesn't want to do this, but he's still going to Columbus to make sure Finn's okay." Mercedes leaned forward. Their snacks went ignored, carrots and styrofoam alike. "I know you don't have a good answer for why you threw me aside this year, but I was one person. You really gonna throw aside everyone in that club? You're worried about all of us 'winding up dead' and are still just gonna wave as we drive off?"

Quinn looked down, but she seemed conflicted. And sad, and stubborn, and _lord almighty_ this girl could be like a brick wall. 

Maybe it shouldn't be about other people. Maybe this argument should be about her. "It's like service projects," Mercedes said. "Look, I know it doesn't compare to what you went through, but when I was in elementary school my dad almost had to declare bankruptcy. It wasn't even his fault. He had a partner in his practice who stole some money and left town. And the lawyers and the police got it all straightened out, but that took a while, you know? In the meantime he had a lot of expensive equipment to pay for, and rent checks to write, and no money to do it with. Things got really, really tight around our house for a while."

Quinn watched warily, but seemed willing to hear wherever Mercedes was going with her story.

"I was only in the fifth grade. All I knew was that everyone else got new clothes for school and I got squat." Mercedes laughed a little. "I bet I was a total brat. I've got no idea how they handled me. And then I heard that we were still going to give up one Saturday a month to work at our church's soup kitchen."

"And you weren't happy about that," Quinn surmised with a slight smile.

"I was pissed off," Mercedes giggled. "If they'd thought I was complaining before... yeah. But then my mom sat me down and had a talk with me. She said that we don't help people because it's easy or fun, but because it's the right thing to do. And it makes us better people to give something of ourselves to other people, whether we've got five dollars to spare or five thousand."

"Did it work?" Quinn asked.

"No, I still pouted every charity Saturday for that whole year," Mercedes said wryly. "I mean, I was ten years old, you know? But looking back, I'm really glad I did it. Because I helped people. And I was just lucky enough to be in a place where I could still give help, instead of really needing it."

"Sometimes I feel like I need help," Quinn admitted after a long pause. "And I don't know where I'd even ask for it. I just... I don't know what I'm doing."

"Well," Mercedes said gently, "it's kinda a cliche, but sometimes helping others really helps you too, you know?"

"I've been terrible to you this year," Quinn eventually said. "You helped me and then I... I was trying to figure out who I was. You didn't fit in."

Yeah, that kind of stung. And kind of made Mercedes want to pull out a few choice words for Quinn. But this was like the fifth grade, she reminded herself; some people needed it more. And whatever had made Quinn so brittle behind her perfect, icy mask... Mercedes was better off. The awkward romances, leaving the Cheerios, the posters all over school, the failed campaign for prom queen: Quinn had kept setting her sights high and stumbling. Now she didn't even want to leave her room.

"We'd all fit in if you'd let us," Mercedes said. "You've got friends. You just have to let us in. Again. And this time, not kick everyone out."

Quinn just looked so damned lost. Those ice powers sure were a good match; she was in her own private wasteland.

"We're working on costumes," Mercedes eventually continued. "Me, Kurt, and Tina. At Kurt's. It's been fun, but we don't know if we'll be able to finish in time. Maybe you could come over and—"

She was already shaking her head. "I can deal with being around Finn in a big group. At his house is a little much." Quinn managed a weak smile. "And his mom barely tolerated me when she saw me again. Without the excuse of dating...."

"So maybe I bring some stuff over here," Mercedes suggested. "Kurt and Tina can piece together the big stuff. We can make it look awesome."

Quinn looked up and met her gaze. Her soft hazel eyes were watery and sad, but she managed a wavering smile. "Kurt would not let us pick the final design for the costumes."

"Well," Mercedes said, "we'd have to follow his plans. Or he'd probably stab us in our sleep, you're right. But we can do the finishing work. Or tackle... gloves and stuff. Little things."

"I could do that," Quinn said in a gentle, tremulous voice. "During the day, when my mom's gone. So she won't come in and ask what we're doing. She doesn't really knock."

"Okay," Mercedes said, leaning forward to pat her hand. Eventually she'd have to deal with talking about Sam, about how to keep Quinn from being so weird and withdrawn when 'we all might die' was off the table, and a bunch of other things. But this was a first step. First steps were good. "I'll be by tomorrow. I'll bring you your mask. And you can tell me your code name, okay? You can work on that tonight."

Quinn didn't look confused by the reference, which meant that she'd read Rachel's texts. "Okay. Um. Do you want...?"

"If you try to force one of those rice cakes on me I swear I'll bubbleshield it right back at you," Mercedes said instantly and a real, broad smile broke apart Quinn's controlled expression.

As she left, all she could think about was the contrast between Kurt’s house and Quinn’s. Kurt didn’t always get along with his father, but there was never any doubt that they were there for each other or that they loved each other. Quinn’s mother fumbled and tried her best, but she’d failed her daughter when she needed her the most. And she was nothing compared to the absolute trainwreck that her father had been. Mercedes had ranted to her own dad about what sort of horrible person would do that to his own child, even before she’d become friendly with Quinn. They both agreed that it wasn’t right.

But what could she do? She’d helped when she could, and now Quinn and her mom were clearly figuring things out as best as they could. Family was family, you only got the one, and it was the luck of the draw as to how things worked out. 

Mercedes got in her car, pulled her seatbelt across her chest, and started the engine. She'd be sure to pick a name that evening before she went to sleep. Then, tomorrow, she and Quinn could talk about who they were going to be.


	8. Terrifying Commandants

"Here," Brittany said. She pulled her hand from behind her back and revealed a perfect pink rose. "This is for you."

Santana froze, then felt warmth pepper her cheeks. She struggled to contain her reaction, but fighting back that blush was futile. 

She'd never gotten flowers before. 

Trying to at least not smile like a complete idiot, Santana said, "Um, thanks. What's this for?" She looked for a place to put it and froze as Brittany carefully stripped the thorns and tucked it behind her ear.

"I was brushing Lord Tubbington," Brittany said as she sat on the end of her bed. Even in the midst of dealing with the insurance adjusters at Santana's house and the total 'no fucking way' that was their life with superpowers, being at Brittany's was soothing. It felt like home even more than her own house, sometimes. "That used to be his pink plastic brush."

"Oh," Santana said, reaching up to touch the rose in her hair. It _felt_ real.

"I still have no idea what I'm doing with my powers," Brittany admitted as she began to French braid her hair. "Weird stuff just happens when it happens. I guess I'm kind of like Artie. He doesn't know what he'll make, either."

Santana's good mood vanished. She was able to be around Artie, but that didn't mean she wanted to hear Brittany bring him up as a topic of discussion. Shouldn't she have moved on? "Yeah, it's weird," she agreed as she sat on the couch and watched Brittany's fingers nimbly tuck her golden hair into a neat braid. "I still can't always figure out when I'm going to call fire." Although, when Sue had compared her to a holstein during practice, it had been tempting to see if she could manage to make her megaphone explode. "I know I've mentioned it before, but I still love that Finn reads minds," she added with a smirk.

"I think it makes sense," Brittany said.

"Seriously?"

"Well, when you don't know what something means, then you read books. And now Finn's reading minds."

Santana snorted. There was one take on it, she guessed.

An unknown voice piped up. Santana started looking wildly around for the intruder and Brittany's fingers froze on her braid. "Birds. Fast birds. Hate clear wall! Clear wall bad, want birds!"

Santana slowly turned to the window and the source she knew would be there. "Oh my god, your cat is talking."

Lord Tubbington crouched on the windowsill. His tail twitched. His rump was high in the air. "Birds."

Brittany looked at him for a long while, then back to Santana and sighed. "Yeah, I _really_ don't know how to control my powers."

When the cat hopped off its perch and trotted out of the room, Santana scooted back so he wouldn't come anywhere near her. This was just too strange. At least he only meowed as he left, having apparently lost his ability to speak with the same speed as it arrived. "Okay, so your whole power is that... you can make anything happen?" she asked with disbelief. 

"I guess," Brittany said with a shrug and returned to braiding her hair. 

"Wow." Hopefully she didn't turn Santana into a tomato or something. Note to self, Santana thought grimly: don't mention tomatoes. 

"Why are you being the captain, anyway?" Brittany wondered as she tied a ribbon around the end of her completed braid. "Do you really want to be a superhero?"

"Wouldn't suck," Santana said. "I don't know. I just hated the idea of Rachel doing it after she screwed us over so hard at Nationals. Like, why does she automatically get everything? I'm good at things, too."

"I don't know if Rachel gets everything," Brittany said after a moment of thought. "Everyone tells her she sucks a lot. We looked way better in her sweaters. And the two of us are way more popular."

"Yeah," Santana said darkly. "For now."

"Why wouldn't I be popular?" Brittany asked with obvious confusion.

"Not you." The end of the school year ripped through Santana's memories, explosion-quick, and she nearly shivered at the memory of prom and how 'out and proud' had so easily proven to be 'out and targeted.' Brittany's beautiful pale eyes crinkled in sympathy at Santana's answer, but she looked ready to give another pep talk about accepting herself and being strong and seriously, Santana couldn't take that. She just wanted something to be easy. To work. For everyone to point at her and go, "Yes! Just like that!"

People did that for superheroes, right? They fucking _loved_ superheroes.

"I don't have Finn's powers, you know," Brittany said.

"Huh?" Santana asked.

"You look like you're thinking something. But I can't read your mind, so unless you use your words...." She shrugged.

"Let's make out," Santana said. It was an obvious distraction and Brittany clearly knew it. She looked unimpressed, and it was a rare day that Brittany looked that unenthused about the idea of anything physical. But she accepted it when Santana stood, sat next to her on the bed, and began slowly unraveling the braid that Brittany had just tied into place. Fingers stole through pale hair, lips met wetly, and pliant bodies pressed against the mattress.

Outside the room, they weren't anything. Girlfriends needed a label. Labels were... Santana wasn't ready for it. Not just yet.

She wasn't ready for labels.

Unless it was something that everyone loved. Santana saw a magazine cover on Brittany's floor as they rearranged themselves and broke off for air: Captain America, leader and most adored of all the Avengers. 

Everyone loved a good captain.

* * *

It was Thursday, the day before their grand voyage to Columbus, and Santana's fingers practically twitched in anticipation. While her seizing control of the group had been an impulsive decision, she grew more excited the closer the moment came. A concert alibi smoothly covered their mission. Everyone had told their parents about the need to focus and become inspired through music if they were going to win Nationals next year, and they'd all gotten permission to go.

"So, what exactly are we going to be doing in Columbus?" Quinn asked as she flipped through a newspaper in Rachel's basement, then tossed it to Santana. 

Santana didn't have an immediate reply as she scanned through articles. It wasn’t like the paper screamed out any signs for them to follow. The lead story was about the resignation of the Buckeyes’ coach. Other featured headlines talked about unemployment rates, election overhauls, and a charity golf tournament. There wasn't anything announcing, "Come here, would-be heroes! Test yourselves against this handy stockpile of easily-bruised starter villains!"

Of course, print news probably wasn't the right place to look. Maybe in a city the size of New York they'd have enough kingpins to cause a steady string of crimes, but Columbus, Ohio didn't exactly measure up. They wanted the stupid little guys who stole purses just because they could, or tried to grab a girl coming out of a bar.

They wanted petty criminals and a high crime rate. That meant that they just had to hit SpotCrime and check where the latest sightings were. "There," Santana said as she pointed to a cluster of symbols covering everything from assault to theft. "That's where we're going. East of the university. Look at that concentration; we'll be able to stop _something._ "

Artie wheeled over and looked at the map on Rachel's laptop. Turning back to everyone, he admitted, "Our terrifying commandant makes a good point."

Rachel made a sharp noise of protest. "I am your terrifying comm... I mean, I'm the captain!" Finn cleared his throat. "Finn and I are the captains!"

"That's still up for debate," Santana said cheerfully. "So, what are we naming this team of ours? I mean. Of mine." 

"I still propose calling ourselves the Golden Stars," Rachel said. Kurt made a sympathetic noise at her, but scrunched up his face as he shook a firm 'no.'

"We are not naming ourselves after Rachel's trademark," Mercedes said firmly. "Nuh uh."

"Well, do you have any better ideas?" Rachel asked.

"Yes," Santana lied when she realized the question was directed at her.

"Which is?" Rachel asked as an eyebrow crawled up her forehead. She must have taken lessons from Kurt on that move.

"We could be... uh... New Directions," Santana said and grimaced. 

"Yeah, there's a good way to keep our secret identities hidden," Tina said.

"Look, I got caught off guard, okay?" Santana snapped. "I'll think of something."

"We just need a name that makes us sound awesome," Finn said thoughtfully. He folded his arms across his chest and said, "Like... like the Awesomes."

Everyone was quiet for a minute. "Everyone in favor of not settling on a name until we think of a good one?" Quinn asked. A majority of hands shot into the air.

"In any case," Kurt said, and pulled out the bags he'd toted there, "I have costumes for everyone. They're just first drafts. We needed something to provide a sense of unity and to offer some protection, and more importantly: something that could be _finished_ in one week's time and budget. Santana, yours happens to be the most polished, so if you could try it on?"

Ooh, exciting. She hurried over there to see what he'd done, and saw with minor disappointment that he was pulling pieces of black leather out of a whole pile of identical material. What good was Kurt if he'd made _uniforms_ for them instead of real _costumes_? It wasn't going to be any fun to be standardized so much, she thought as she accepted the pieces and then headed to the bathroom to change. She could just wear a Cheerios uniform if she wanted to look identical to everyone else. Behind her, she could hear Kurt giving instructions on what they should do with the masks he'd brought. "And bring out the hair dryer, Santana!" he called after her.

After a vague acknowledgement she closed the door and undressed. The pants were nice, tight and flattering, but the jacket was nothing special. She made a few faces in the mirror and grabbed the dryer as requested, then headed out. Although people seemed generally pleased at the _idea_ of a costume, Santana's individual disappointment soon became impossible to hide. Kurt saw her displeasure and, with a short, annoyed sigh, asked her what was wrong. She trailed her fingers toward her jaw line as she said, "This goes up to my neck."

"Right?" Kurt said as he checked something on her shoulders and then scribbled a few notes. "It's leather. Sort of thin, it won't offer a lot of protection, but it'll still stop random shrapnel." Upon reviewing his words, he sighed again. "I'm actually designing something for other people and it _blocks shrapnel_. What is my life, really?"

Santana frowned as she thought about how superheroines were supposed to look: hot. They were tough, strong, and distracted their opponents with awesome racks barely contained by skintight spandex. Kurt was so clueless. She decided to make the best of a bad situation and fumbled for the zipper, then tugged it down until the pull rested neatly between her breasts.

She was busy adjusting her cleavage when she realized Kurt was staring at her. Kissing the air made him grimace. "Pull that zipper back up," Kurt said. He sounded pained.

"No. I look awesome and you were trying to hide me." She needed to find the right push-up bra to wear under her costume. If she only had a narrow window of cleavage, she really had to take advantage of it.

"I was trying to protect everyone from being hit by flying rocks!" Kurt stared pointedly at her, but like that would work; Santana always won staring contests. Eventually he threw his hands into the air. "Fine. Come over here, draw on this sketch and tell me how you want to look."

"Wait," Mercedes asked. "Santana gets to pick her outfit? We were making everyone look the same. Why does Santana get to look different?"

"I want my own outfit, then," Tina agreed. "I've got tons of ideas."

"Can I trade these pants for jeans?" Finn asked when everyone started crowding around Kurt and demanding customizations. He looked ready to weep.

Santana smirked and returned to adjusting her cleavage.

For a while they were consumed with telling Kurt what they wanted for costumes, chatting about what they would manage to do in Columbus, and soothing nerves. Mike seemed to be the worst, as he was absolutely convinced that his parents would find out what he was doing and ground him from glee club. And football. And dancing, and television, and breathing. _Wow,_ Santana thought as she looked at pictures of the city and tried to get a feeling for what they'd face. _And I thought disinterested parents were bad._

After a mostly-wasted evening of nitpicking costumes and wandering the Google Street View version of Columbus, Artie gathered the group and retrieved something from his bag. "Oh, so I don't forget before tomorrow. Here, I made these little communicators out of the cell phones I, um, borrowed."

Mike looked concerned. "Wait, am I not getting my phone back?"

Artie hesitated. "Probably not. So, I'll take one communicator and keep a lookout from my van," he said without acknowledging Mike's distraught expression. "I made four others so far. Who wants one?"

"Mine!" Santana and Rachel both said, grabbing for them. They looked askance at the other girl as they arrived at Artie's hand at the same time.

"Finn should take another one," Rachel said. Oh, of course she did. Of _course_ the communicators had to go to their little automatic leader duo. After a bit of thought she added, "And Noah."

"No," Santana said. "They should go to Brittany and Quinn."

The group looked between the two girls. The fight was on.

"And what's your logic behind that?" Rachel asked, folding her arms across her chest.

"What's _your_ logic?" Santana asked right back. Because it was pretty clear and pretty selfish: Rachel wanted her boyfriend and kosher buddy to get these new little toys. Smirking, she added, "And let's say Artie made another. Who would you give it to?" The favoritism was about to become totally obvious, because she'd pick—

"Kurt," Rachel said.

"There's a shocker," Santana snorted.

Rachel smiled. "Finn is the obvious choice because of his telepathy. Artie can relay messages to him, and then he can relay them silently to anyone else."

Wait, shit. That made sense.

"Noah is the only person with purely physical abilities, and so he seems to have total control. If Artie sees a problem, Noah is the most reliable person we have right now to be able to deal with it." Oh, that bitch was so _smug_ as she pierced Santana's attempts to show her up. Rachel knew exactly what Santana had been doing. "And Kurt can move quietly and invisibly. He's the best choice to go off on his own if needed, and so it would be good to have a way to stay in contact with him." Rachel's voice was sickly sweet and innocent as she replied, "But what was your logic behind picking Brittany and Quinn? I'm completely willing to be convinced."

Santana raised her chin. "Quinn's got way more _successful_ leadership experience than you. Like I do."

"And Brittany?"

There was no possible answer there. Brittany had no control over her powers. Even if she did, they weren't the go-to solution for solving anything like Puck's were. Mike would be a better option because he could scout like Kurt. _Tina_ would be a better option because, until she found her powers, she could blend completely into a crowd. She still thought Quinn was a good answer, but in terms of team management there was no defending Santana naming Brittany.

And everyone knew it. "Whatever, Finn and Puck are fine," Santana said shortly. "Like Finn'll be able to concentrate enough to hear Artie _and_ think at us at the same time, though."

"What's the girl equivalent of a dick measuring contest?" she heard Tina giggle to Mercedes. Santana glared at her and wondered if she could set someone's eyeballs on fire.

"We gotta head out again, guys," Finn said, glancing at his watch.

"Yeah, I don't want to push my luck," Mike agreed.

That set off a grand exodus, with everyone promising to see each other tomorrow. Kurt said he would make what costume changes he could, but most would have to wait. Rachel talked about practice plans. Artie apologized over the broken cell phones. 

Santana tried to clear her mind and think of nothing but her face on bedroom walls. Her face on magazine covers. Her and Brittany. She'd do it. Just wait.

* * *

Friday evening arrived. Miraculously, everyone showed up.

After reviewing their numbers, the group decided to only take two cars. It was fewer vehicles to worry about and less gas to buy. Anything that might potentially raise parents' suspicions was bad. Fortunately, the few seats in Artie's modified van could hold the spillover that didn't quite fit into Kurt's stupidly huge SUV. 

Santana had ridden in both cars. She knew which she was aiming for. Smoking hot superhero captains deserved leather seating and a DVD player.

Expectedly, Mercedes, Finn, and Rachel headed straight for Kurt's car. After some friendly scuffles over who deserved shotgun, Finn won handily by pointing out that he was big and no one would want to share a bench seat with him. Santana called Brittany over, and when she turned was surprised to see a hunk of muscle and bad haircut also standing there.

"I wanna ride with Kurt," Puck said, shrugging. "What?"

"Wasn't Artie, like, your 'bro' this year?" Santana asked him, making air quotes with her fingers.

"I don't know, I just want to be here. You got a problem with that?"

"I guess not," Santana said, frowning. She didn't know _why_ Puck getting along so well with Kurt was weirding her out, but it totally was.

Tina, Mike, and Quinn waved before hopping inside Artie's van. Quinn's blonde head soon appeared at shotgun, leaving the back seat to the others. Oh, how adorable. Mike and Tina were left alone. That meant the happy couple could make out all the way to Columbus. And wouldn't that just be hilariously awkward for one Mr. Abrams to deal with.

_Excellent_ , Santana smirked as she climbed in next to Brittany.

"Can we watch a movie?" Brittany asked when she saw the screen.

"I borrowed these to ramp us up," Mercedes said with a giggle as she showed them a DVD box. "Kind of on the nose, but...."

_Great_ , Santana thought as they all buckled in, checked with Artie over their communicators, and then pulled away from the curb. 'On the nose' was an understatement, she thought as the Teen Titans theme began playing. Maybe being on Sue Sylvester's squad had warped her, but Santana thought that gearing up for battle should involve a lot less electronica and a lot more bass and the screams of one's enemies.

After three episodes Puck and Santana demanded a break from animated superheroic antics. But after that initial wave of relief, she realized the inevitable fallout of this decision: now she was crammed in a car with all of those people and there was nothing to do but talk.

Rachel was the first to start a conversation. She leaned up to Kurt and Finn in the front seats and asked, "You know, I've been so busy doing research on everything that I completely forgot. How did you get back into the house?"

Sunset still lingered enough for Santana to make out Kurt smirking in the rearview mirror. "That night we walked up to the front steps and Finn took off all his clothes."

Everyone, save their driver, turned toward Finn. Finn glared at Kurt and looked ready to kill him.

"Well," Kurt amended, "except for his boxers. And socks. He struck quite the imposing figure, if I might say. I wadded up all his other clothes, climbed back into the house, and unlocked the front door. Then I hurried back up to bed." Like he was counting down, Kurt finished a few seconds later, "Annnnd then Finn opened the front door and set off the alarm."

A couple of disbelieving laughs erupted. Santana snorted behind her hand at the image of half-naked Finn standing on his front steps while the alarm alerted everyone to his presence.

"Long story short," Kurt continued giddily, "it turns out that Finn sleepwalks! Who knew, right? And maybe it’s not a good idea to arm that alarm that neither of us knew we had, lest he set it off on accident."

"Apparently I’m really good at playing ‘sleepy and confused,’" Finn said dryly.

"A true master of your field," Kurt said and changed lanes. He nearly giggled as he finished, "It sounded like the two of them were really debating whether Finn would really make it out to the front porch in his underwear, and settled on: yep, that's Finn."

"It didn't help that Figgins called Mom about me doing that for Rocky Horror, apparently," Finn grumbled.

After a round of giggling comfortably against Brittany's ear, Santana was distracted again by Rachel Freaking Berry. "Since we're about to hit the streets as a real, active superhero team," Rachel began, "we should all share our code names. That way we can practice with them and be sure we don't slip up." The last light was fading from the sky and so Santana only saw the silhouette of Rachel tossing her hair over one shoulder. "After verifying that it wasn't in _active_ use in the past couple of years, I've gone with Anthem. No one will remember that other hero. I'll make it my own."

"Hey, like the songs we had to sing!" Finn realized and Rachel nodded proudly at him. "That makes sense. Um, Kurt showed me a thesaurus online—" Breaking off, Finn acknowledged the confused noise that Puck was making. "It's for words that mean the same thing as other words. Not a dinosaur."

Puck looked instantly bored.

"We hunted for words about what people are thinking or feeling," Kurt continued. "And decided on 'Intent.'"

Everyone in the car considered it. "I guess that works," Mercedes said, and Finn seemed a little disheartened at the muted reaction. "I looked for stuff with my shields and found...." She swept her hands dramatically in front of her. "Safeguard."

"You sound like a deodorant," Brittany said.

Mercedes turned around and glared at her. "And what's your name?"

"Haywire."

"That's...." Mercedes trailed off. "You know, I've actually got no complaints there."

Santana ran her hand down Brittany's shoulder and arm, then returned the smile that she got. They'd picked that out together. It seemed perfect for chaos powers. Then they'd checked the admittedly useful superhero links Rachel had sent them, so that she could verify the name that she really wanted was—against all odds—unused. "I'm Wildfire."

Rachel turned around. She looked genuinely distraught at Santana getting such a kickass code name. "That has to be taken."

Santana studied her fingernails. "Fictional character only. Not a single real life hero is using it. It's _all_ mine." She rolled her head in the other direction. "Puck, go."

With a broad, proud smile, Puck crossed his arms across his chest and said, "Champion."

"Ooh, that's good," Mercedes said. 

"I refuse to believe that's open," Kurt said.

"...Okay, technically? It's not," Puck said. Raising his voice, he spoke over Rachel as she began protesting about copyright infringement and superhero branding. (God, Santana would not be surprised if Rachel had secretly gotten some MBA just to learn how to be more obnoxious in selling herself.) "But the guy who's using it right now is an alien or something. And so he's kind of busy, you know, being somewhere else in the universe."

"I suppose that's all right," Rachel finally said. "So long as _you_ are the one to deal with him if he ever shows up and is grumpy about it. Kurt, what's yours?"

He didn't look away from the windshield. "Shade."

"Shade?" Santana repeated. "As in throwing?"

Kurt corrected tightly, "As in shadows or a ghost. It’s perfect for someone with control over illusions who can go anywhere. I may not be excited about Rachel’s plans, but I still picked the perfect name for myself."

"The gay guy is throwing shade," Santana chortled. "Awesome."

"Just… shut up!" he snapped. Mercedes leaned forward and tried to reassure him.

A quick burst of static caught Santana's attention. Rachel had just tapped her communicator and was asking if Artie could hear her. "Oh, good!" she said. Santana fumbled with hers until she could also hear what Artie was saying. "Artie, we're telling each other our code names so we'll be ready to use them in action. What did you settle on?"

"Envision," Artie said.

Rachel shook her head. "You can't use that, Artie. The Vision is already an active hero."

"Not the Vision, Envision. There's an 'en.' The 'en' makes it different."

"Oh." She seemed to consider that. "I guess that's all right."

"Glad it meets your approval," Artie said dryly.

Quinn's soft voice came next. "I picked Snowfall. Mike is telling me he chose Swift."

"And Tina's?" Santana asked without thinking about it.

"She can't yet, remember?" Quinn replied and Santana shrugged. Right, right, Tina was dead weight. She wasn't sure why they were bringing her.

"Then that's everyone!" Rachel enthused. She rattled off everyone's codenames for the other group to hear. "Artie, did you get that address I sent you? You'll find an alley nearby. You can park there and keep an eye on everything with your computer and police scanner."

"I... don't have a police scanner. Was I supposed to have a police scanner?"

"Yes, that was in your worksheets." Rachel barely hesitated before allowing, "Well, in any case you can keep an eye on everything with your computer. Kurt, I'll tell you where to park. It's further away, so people won't associate the two cars with each other if they see them."

Santana looked at her sidelong, but Rachel missed it in the darkness. She was willing to accept Rachel having a better handle on their powers and how to work with them; clearly, she'd put aside things like 'having a life' in favor of reading up on superheroes. But Santana was the one who'd discovered where to find crime in Columbus and she was the one who knew how to manage a bunch of people putting themselves into physical danger. The risk of vocal cord strain didn't exactly compare to missing a landing on a hard wooden floor, and so leading cheerleaders should give her far more captain cred than Rachel had ever earned from leading a choir.

And then there was Finn. Poor, moronic Finn. Sure, some quarterbacks might be good in a crisis, but Finn had been a common factor between Tanaka's awful season and Beiste's great one. With that in mind? Santana wanted to give all the credit to the big lady with the schoolmarm hair. Rachel was obnoxious, but at least she had a brain and drive. Finn was clearly just leeching off her hard work.

Yep. There was some turbulence at the beginning, but by the end of the evening Santana Lopez would clearly be triumphant. Better than Rachel, and better than Finn, and loved for everything she was.

* * *

They spilled into the night in matching black leather gear and masks. They were a unit, a team. They were the next big heroes to step onto a worldwide stage.

They were so _bored_ , Santana thought fifteen minutes later.

"It was an argument over which movie to go to," Kurt reported as he returned from the alley's entrance. They'd heard a couple shouting and had sent him to scout whether their intervention could do any good. He became visible between a few steps, like he was pulling away an invisibility cloak. 

"Was he going to hit her if she didn't see what he wanted?" Santana asked, perhaps with a bit too much excitement.

Kurt boggled at her before saying, "No. They were laughing and trying to figure out what Super 8 is about. Sorry to ruin your hopes of domestic violence, _Wildfire._ "

Everyone seemed appropriately put off, and so Santana mumbled, "Whatever, I didn't mean it like that. Just that we should be ready if something did happen. It's called being on guard, _Shade._ " Most people didn't seem to buy it, but they let it pass.

"Maybe it's a good thing that nothing's going wrong," Finn said. "It means that no one's in trouble, right?"

"It's good for them, maybe," Rachel sighed. "But how are we supposed to make a name for ourselves if there are no opportunities for us to shine?"

"I'm kind of wishing we hadn't done full-body leather costumes," Tina said, shifting uncomfortably. She leaned up and smacked Puck's shoulder; he eyed her until he noticed she'd activated his communicator. "Um... Envision, any chance you could make us little air conditioners for our outfits?"

He laughed. "Sure. There's a chance. Or I might accidentally make a Mr. Freeze suit, if I manage anything at all." After a pause, he continued, "That would be so great. I've gotta try it."

"Uh. What's her name... Snowfall," Finn said. "Hey, can you make it colder around us?"

Everyone turned to Quinn. She seemed put off at the sudden attention, but then got that tiny little tilt to her eyes that Santana recognized. Even if it was for something as stupid as air conditioning, Quinn Fabray was the most important person in the room. (Or the alley, anyway.) For someone who hadn't felt 'most important' for a while, even that was something.

"Everyone, be quiet," she said as she closed her eyes. "I need to concentrate." They all fell into a hush as Quinn breathed steadily in and out. Cool breezes wrapped Santana, and with a delighted laugh they all looked up at the snow falling from a summer sky. "I did it," Quinn said with clear amazement.

"That's so cool," Tina said. Giggling, she added, "In, you know, both the pun and non-pun sense." Sticking out her tongue to catch snowflakes inspired other people to do the same, and soon a band of would-be teenage superheroes were acting like idiots in a Columbus back alley. That distraction allowed for their next mistake.

"Okay," came Mike's voice from well above their heads. "Help?"

Tina looked to her side, paled, and then squinted back up through Quinn's wispy clouds. "Oh god, Mike? Mike! Stop flying!"

"I'd really love to!"

As Brittany tried to fly after him to no avail, Rachel turned and scanned their group quickly. "Fastball Special."

"...What?" Puck asked when he realized she was staring at him.

"You all really need to study the superheroic lingo I included in Appendix C, it would make for much more effective communication. Noah, pick up Kurt and throw him up to that fire escape. Kurt, climb up and retrieve Mike before he flies into the stratosphere." They hesitated, and she said shrilly, "Go!"

"Uh," Puck said as he picked up Kurt. Though Kurt presented Puck with no more weight challenge than lifting a paper bag, it took them both a second to figure out how to deal with long limbs and just where Puck's hands should rest. "Sorry if I throw your head into a ladder." Mike's cries refocused them both, and with a quick nod between them Puck lobbed Kurt into the air. 

The Olympics had come to mind when Santana saw his practices in the corn field, as they probably had for everyone. That night, the Summer Games were in full force again. Kurt grabbed onto the railing of the escape like it was a high bar and flipped himself over onto its flat base, then considered the zig-zagging ladder for a quick second. He shook his head, hopped back to the outside, and scrambled up it in a series of lunges and jumps. That speed put him on the rooftop just in time to snag Mike, and with a relieved sigh they floated back down to the ground with Kurt weighing him safely as ballast.

"That was awesome," Finn said, looking more than a little amazed.

"Colossus performs a similar move with Wolverine," Rachel said. She looked incredibly pleased with herself. Unfortunately, so did most of New Directions. Hell, they looked happier with _her_ than with the guy who'd done some sort of crazy Jackie Chan shit and actually pulled Mike back down to earth!

"Good job, Kurt," Santana said loudly, to return the credit where it should go. That seemed to snap through everyone's _Rachel Rachel Rachel_ lens and they all clapped Kurt on the shoulder, and then slapped Puck heartily on the back. 

"Guys, you forgot to use your codenames just then," Artie said across their communicators. Everyone groaned. 

"This is hard," Mercedes said. "He's not Shade, he's Kurt Hummel!"

"Wow. Really helping with keeping a secret identity, there," Artie replied dryly. "If the cops lock you guys up I'm driving off. You'd sell me up the river, lady."

The moment ebbed: they commented more on Quinn's impromptu snowstorm, gave a bit more praise to Kurt's agility and Puck's strength, and then quickly got bored again. But Santana could feel the shift in everyone's allegiance as Tina undid her belt and used it to join her wrist to Mike's as a towline.

"Baby, _say something_ when that happens again," she chided him.

"I thought I could turn it off this time," Mike said sheepishly as they were pulled back into the opinion coalescing in the group. That opinion, boiled down, said nothing more than: yay Rachel, yay Finn.

Finn had realized Quinn could cool them down and trusted her to do it. Rachel had come up with the move to save Mike from floating off into infinity. They'd led. In tiny, stupid ways, they'd led. If they did become amazing, famous superheroes, there was a very good chance that, right now, everyone would point to them as their captains.

Screw that. "Come on, everyone," Santana said. "Champion, throw Shade back on the fire escape. Shade, put the ladder down." Yeah, she'd described it with their code names. That was professional. Super-professional.

"Excuse me?" Kurt asked.

"Standing around here isn't doing any good. Let's get up on the rooftops and look for trouble." People hesitated, and so Santana raised her eyebrows pointedly. She could feel her mask tug at her skin and wondered how much of her irritation actually came through in her expression. "Do you want to be heroes, or do you want to be a bunch of bored liars wasting an evening in an alley? Because if so? Then let's just actually find a concert to go to. It'd be more fun."

"Do it," Kurt sighed at Puck. "She has a point." After another quick throw via Puckerman, he shoved the ladder until it rolled down to the ground, and then did a repeat of his mad scramble to the rooftop. _Show-off._ Everyone else followed far more carefully, particularly the bound Mike-and-Tina unit.

The visual boost was less impressive than she'd expected. Santana knew perfectly well that they'd been standing in the midst of relatively short buildings, but somehow her brain had decided that superheroes stood on big, dramatic skyscrapers and felt their hair blow freely in the wind. They were not suddenly on a skyscraper. A flag was not whipping photogenically behind them. They were on the top of a small office building that, from the looks of the front sign, hosted a lot of divorce lawyers.

Yeah, they were totally living the dream.

Why had she thought this would actually get her any attention? That this would be something _real_? That it would be something that wouldn't get ripped away when Mr. Schue and Sue had another stupid argument, when her parents promised her something and forgot yet again, or when the entire student body proved to be people she could never, ever trust with anything but a facade? 

She knew being a superhero would be behind a mask, but at least then people _expected_ it.

"By this point I do kind of want to go to a concert," Tina eventually sighed. 

"Or you two could go to a club," Brittany suggested with a glance at the leather band binding their wrists together. Mike's eyebrows rose. "I'm just saying, you're in leather catsuits and you have Mike on a leash. They might not even charge a cover."

"Everyone, be quiet," Rachel said with a frown.

Santana unzipped her jacket again, even as Kurt grumbled at her; Brittany followed suit and his expression sank further. Puck and Finn leaned over the side of the building and pointed to people on the street, and Finn said that he could try to discover their favorite television shows. Puck wondered if he could hit them with loogies.

"Everyone!" Rachel said, but people ignored her. "Be quiet!" She glowered to no avail, then gave up and stared into the distance at something Santana couldn't see. If she were some movie Terminator, Santana would have thought Rachel was doing a readout of some perceived threat in the area. But Santana was _pretty_ sure Artie hadn't given her a random cyborg upgrade, and so it was like Rachel was staring just to stare. "Someone needs help!"

That got some attention. "Huh?" Finn said, turning a full circle. "I don't hear anything. In my brain, I mean."

"They're saying they don't want any trouble," Rachel said. Her gaze was locked with laser clarity at a far corner of the small city block they were on.

"Do you have crazy good hearing, now?" Santana asked. Wouldn't that just be great? Rachel tilts her head back and out pops another superpower, like pez?

"No," Rachel said after a second of consideration. "They're loud enough for any of you to hear. I'm just able to concentrate and ignore any distractions."

Oh. If she did have another power, it was apparently the power of single-mindedness. That was appropriate, Santana thought as she trailed behind her. Everyone else followed suit, quietly and cautiously. By the time they hit the next roof, Santana could hear the problem. 

"I do not like how this sounds," Mercedes murmured. A woman was pleading with a man to leave her alone. She didn't want any trouble. She didn't think it had been a big deal that she'd come to the bar. Another voice—another woman's—added that they'd just gotten off work, were tired, and wanted to go home. If they just let them by, they'd go straight home. They promised. They both did.

The group all clearly heard, and with a determined nod they crept toward the edge of the roof. "We're going into stealth mode," Santana thought to say with a quick tap on her shoulder communicator. "Don't say anything."

"Gotcha," Artie said.

"I just told... never mind, shut up." Wary that the people below them might have guns, Santana inched her way to the lip lining the roof and peered over it. It was dark and they'd have no reason to be looking up there unless they gave them one.

One woman stood under the building's overhang, but the main speaker was in the center of a tight cluster of men. She had dark skin, a heavy build, and was wearing what looked like a nurse's scrubs; it must have been a long shift at the hospital. Her short, bleached-brown hair twists moved as she looked between the men.

No, Santana realized, and felt that awareness ripple through the group. Those weren't twists of hair on her head.

Like some modern mutant Medusa, her head was covered in living, waving fingers.

Something about the writhing mass struck her as so deeply _wrong_ that she pushed back from the lip. Mutants were freaks. No one liked them. Mutants were unmonitored threats to the entire world, who demanded more and more every day from normal people. Those were the words she heard every morning on Fox  & Friends when she walked past the television. 

In her mind she recoiled from siding with the people on that show, who too often had choice words for people with her skin tone or who loved how she loved. But her heart was worn down by years of hearing parents agree about 'that mutant threat,' and she couldn't do anything but rear backward as her noise crinkled in distaste.

She'd never actually seen a mutant before.

"We have to help her," Rachel said, leaning so far forward that she might well fall to the ground. She turned and glared when some responded to her orders too slowly. "There are people who need our help, this is exactly what we came here for!"

"Are they really _people_ who need our help?" Quinn asked dubiously. Santana was willing to bet that she'd heard many of the same mutant debates in her house.

"They're two ladies surrounded by a bunch of angry dudes, Quinn," Mercedes countered.

Put that way, they had no choice but to make a quick but quiet dash for another fire escape. Tina untied her wrist that time, saying that she could at least grab at Mike's leash if necessary. As the streets were thankfully bare, they weren't noticed as they rounded the corner and arranged themselves as a ten-men group. 

"Halt, evildoers!" said Rachel. Her hands planted on her hips.

"Halt, evildoers?" Santana repeated.

The group slowly turned. Swallowing, Santana realized that even from a quick glance she could make out a switchblade, pipe, and... and that was a gun. That was definitely a gun. "Who the hell are you?" asked a large, grizzled man who smelled like he'd been drinking. 

"We're the... uh...." Rachel floundered as she remembered that they'd never settled on a name. "That's not important. We're here to tell you to stop victimizing innocents in this fair city!" And then she smiled. Total show face.

"Are you kidding me with this?" Santana asked her.

"Keep things backstage, Wildfire," Rachel said through a teeth-gritted smile. "This is showtime."

"Ra, uh, Anthem," Finn whispered. "That guy's got a gun. Maybe you should tone it down a little."

"Maybe this is one of those conventions," one of the men snorted. "Like when I saw five chicks in the Princess Leia bikini."

"Move on, kids," one of them said with mock sweetness. "Just keep walking and you don't ever have to say you were here." Over their shoulders, Santana could just see the terrified eyes of the woman with the nauseating finger hair. Cowering against the wall was her friend, who Santana now saw was a deep, vibrant orange with scales across her forehead and cheeks. She didn't look a day over twenty-two.

"That's not going to happen," Tina said and sounded almost brave despite her complete lack of powers. "Let them go. They didn't do anything wrong."

"They showed up here and shoved their freak bodies in our faces," sneered another man who reeked of cheap beer.

"Well, what can we say?" Finn said levelly. "We sort of like freaks."

"Please help us," mouthed the orange woman.

"I heard about kids like this," confided one man to another. "Bunch of high schoolers get bored during the summer and try to pretend they're superheroes. News had a story about three in Cincinnati who all broke their arms trying to fly."

"We're not pretending," Santana said shortly. She was going to _own_ this stupid superhero glory if it was the last thing she did.

"Move along," repeated a man more intently. "And we can all just say that none of this ever happened."

"Crimes against mutants get thrown in the back of the file cabinet," Tina said in a strong voice. "I've read articles."

"Yeah," they replied like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Of course: they were targeting mutants because they could get away with it. It was McKinley writ large; when the people in charge sat on their asses, the biggest assholes thought they could get away with anything. Well. Santana Lopez knew how to take care of that: pull out a little firepower.

"Just walk the fuck on," Santana said. "Trust me, you want to do this or you'll regret it. I'll even count you down. Three."

"Santana," Rachel said, looking a little worried.

"Two."

The men laughed.

"One."

The men laughed again, but didn't move.

"Zero," Santana said and flicked her hand toward them. "Zero... zero." _Come on, powers,_ she told herself desperately. Fire. Fire. Fire was good, fire was very good, if she could summon fire that would be _just awesome_ —

It appeared, but where she'd been trying to throw it rather than in her palm. A neon bar sign on the building wall exploded in a flash of sparks and everyone ducked. Screams rang out and Santana desperately hoped they weren't hers.

The next moments were mayhem. She could see Puck fling aside someone who barreled into their group. Finn tried to shout directions. Rachel attempted to use her song as a weapon, and only managed to knock the neon sign completely down and leave a dangling cable in its place. And then a man, trying to grab at anything he could, swung Tina against the wall... and into that live, sparking wire.

Mike screamed, but Tina didn't. Her eyes flashed bright with electricity, and then she stepped forward with an amazed grin on her face. _"Oh,"_ she said in an instant of wonder before some instinctive memory of what to do next seemed to enter her mind. In a strange, echoing voice, Tina ordered them, "Leave... them... _alone!_ "

A wave of energy rushed out from Tina, returning whatever energy she'd absorbed back to the air. When it hit Santana pure, overwhelming terror filled her. She ran. She couldn't hide, she couldn't stop, she had to get away from... from _what_ , she wondered as she abruptly crossed the boundaries of whatever attack Tina had let out, and all her fear faded. A few others were within view—Puck, Brittany, Mike—and they all seemed to remember they'd run off and left Tina. If any of those men were running back, too... Santana didn't like to think about what would happen next, and she picked up her pace.

Puck and Mike sped ahead. She could hear the sounds of scuffling as she rounded a corner. It sounded like the men had come back for revenge on whoever was convenient, and that happened to be the two mutant women who had crouched low during the fight and had thus missed Tina's bizarre attack wave.

"There's too many of them!" one of the men shouted as they all returned to the front of the bar. Thankfully, its patrons knew a fight when they heard one and had stayed safely inside. "Run!" When they fled, the mutant women darted for safety in the other direction. They didn't even offer a thank-you.

That was just rude.

"Hey!" Santana shouted after one of the men. "You, taking, custody! Now!" That was what they needed, to bring one of these guys in to custody.

Rachel seemed to have the same idea. "Stop him, Qui—Snowfall!"

Quinn shot Rachel an annoyed look before raising her hands high. Then she just stood there. "Oh, come on!" she said desperately after a moment's hesitation. "Ice the sidewalk!" she pleaded with her hands. That clearly failed, and so she scowled, focused, and summoned the block of ice that she'd reliably managed before. Like a champion ballplayer, she hurled the chunk at the criminal's head.

"Shit!" he said when it impacted his skull and sent him stumbling forward against the sidewalk. He pushed himself up and rounded on them as his companions rounded the corner. Violence gleamed in his eyes and he hefted a crowbar, and fear took a back seat to pride. This big, strong man who'd been so ready to dominate a couple of women whom society cared nothing for had been left frustrated that night. A group of teenagers in homemade costumes might do the trick. "You serious with that, little punks?"

"Yes, we most definitely are," Rachel said with only a slight quaver to her voice. "You assaulted innocent people and you should march yourself to a police station right now."

"Technically," Puck pointed out, "Qui... damn, this is hard. Snowfall just assaulted him, too."

"Thanks, Champion," Quinn said sarcastically. "Between the two of you I'm so glad I picked this code name."

"It's ten against one," Finn told the man. "Do you really think you can win? You were doing really bad stuff. Come on, just go turn yourself in and no one has to get hurt. Okay?"

"Held up fine against those mutie freaks flinging powers around," he sneered. "Not gonna worry over a bunch of brats in Halloween costumes, neither."

Santana was startled, and realized many of the others around her were making the same soft noises. Against all logic, the crook thought the light show going on was coming from the visible mutants he'd been assaulting. In the fury of flying fists, he hadn't noticed just how well Mike and Puck could fight. He had no idea just what it was that Quinn had thrown at him. 

_Score._ The element of surprise was on their side, and they meant they could totally take him down. Let's see, who could reliably scare the shit out of someone? Tina wasn't brushing him away like a gnat, so her energy-sucking powers probably had to recharge. That left.... "Shade!" she said, and Kurt risked a quick glance at her. "Go demony or something," she hissed. He looked confused, and so she said more pointedly, "Scare him!"

"Just _say_ that next time," Kurt said, and the image of a roaring lion appeared between them and the would-be mutant-killer. The limits of Kurt's illusions were immediately apparent. The lion opened its mouth but no sound came out. Kurt clearly wasn't an expert on African wildlife, and so the lion sort of... well, to be honest, it sort of looked like a real-life Simba, animated proportions and all. But it was suddenly there, very close, and very, very large.

When the man let out a high-pitched shriek and dropped his weapon, Santana smirked.

That smirk fell away when he reached into his pocket and aimed desperately at the illusory lion with the Saturday night special inside. The animal vanished when Kurt sucked in a deep breath, but it was too late. A shot fired. It rebounded off Mercedes' instinctive shield and plunged deeper into the group. Santana heard someone scream.

She heard _Brittany_ scream.

The world went very bright and very, very hot in her eyes. Santana shrieked in rage and raised her arms. Flames wreathed her hands, then her shoulders, and then her entire body. She was a creature of living flame as she strode forward, howling like some unearthly demon, and the criminal ran. _No._ He wouldn't get away, not after he'd hurt Brittany. Her arm hand stabbed the night air and fire tore through it after the running man. She tried again, and again, intent on nothing more than making him hurt like Brittany had hurt.

"Wildfire!" Quinn screamed. It wasn't the first time, Santana realized distantly; just the first time she'd heard it. It also took her that long to feel how her flames were dying out under all of the ice and snow that Quinn could generate.

"I'm okay," Brittany said, popping up behind Quinn. "I'm okay, look." She held up an old boot. "This hit me in the face instead of a bullet. I guess I changed it."

Santana stared blankly at Brittany, and then at the smudges on her face that did look like the tread on a dirty boot. "Oh."

"Um," Finn said. A good part of the group mimicked him.

"What?" Santana asked. She felt cold, but she had just _seriously_ turned down the heat. It felt like the end of a long, successful practice; she hadn't known she could push herself that far, and yet it felt good to explore the limits of what her body could do. Everyone kept staring and she looked down. "Oh," she said again. Except for the specially-ordered superhero mask still on her face, she'd burned off every last scrap of her costume. 

"I worked so hard to make those pants," Kurt whimpered.

"Can I have someone's jacket or something?" Santana muttered as she awkwardly tried to cover herself. She might be confident, but "standing buck-ass naked on a strange city's sidewalk" was a little past "confident." Finn handed her his, trying to cover his eyes like Kurt as he did, and Santana quickly wormed into it. It was thankfully long enough to act like a minidress; god bless that lumbering giant.

That was when she heard sirens.

Santana looked in horror at the mess they'd made: the broken sign, the electrical burns against the wall, the... the _whatever_ it was down the street that was now on fire, by her hand. Was it something small? Like a bike or a moped? Please be something small, she thought. Oh _god_ , please be something small.

"What do we do now?" Mercedes asked nervously as they heard the cars arrive from two different directions, pinning them in.

Rachel and Finn didn't have an answer for her.

It would have been a great time for Santana to step up. She could have been the leader who fixed everything. It could have been her time.

If only she weren't at a loss for words, too.


	9. First Blood

"What should we do?" asked Kurt in a tiny voice as the police sirens closed in. This was not his responsibility. Santana had been fighting with Rachel and Finn over leadership. It was _their_ job to fix it. It was their job to not let the police haul him in front of his father and announce that Kurt was headed for a top-secret prison medical lab with lots of pointy objects.

Rachel and Finn looked nervously at each other. Santana fumbled syllables.

"Uh, they're getting close," Puck said with growing concern. "Guys?"

"Into the alley," Rachel said. "Hurry!" They were happy to have any plan at all, and so they ran for the alley that held Artie's van.

"Now where?" Mercedes asked as they looked frantically around. The alley's far distant end opened onto another street that might soon hold policemen. For a moment Kurt thought that they could all pile into Artie's van and speed off, but that would draw more attention than simply hoping they were overlooked.

"Brittany, open a portal or something," Santana said. An uncertain response drove her to shake Brittany by the shoulders in desperation. "You said your powers can do anything, so get us out of here!"

"But—"

"Do it!" Santana almost yelled at her and several people lunged forward to cover her mouth. Brittany looked hurt and scared, but still couldn't manage to just pull that rabbit magically from a hat.

"If there's some energy to absorb," Tina said, "maybe I could make them run? It's easy now that I've done it. I... maybe I could use Artie's van battery to charge up. Or some heroes can pull energy from other _people_ , so maybe if I touch someone—"

"If the police all flee," Rachel said grimly, "then they'll come back even more determined to figure out what did that to them."

"What's going on?" Artie said across the shoulder communicators. "Guys?"

Kurt stared helplessly at the alley exit. He could see the approaching red-blue swirl of an active siren. The cops were coming. They were almost there. 

In that second, everything became clear. Tina had talked about scaring the police away, but he'd been the one Santana had tapped to scare off that criminal. He couldn't _force_ any sort of reaction like Tina apparently could, but his power was far, far more flexible.

"Artie," Kurt said quickly as he leaned near Rachel's communicator, "do not speak and do not move. That goes for everyone." A beat later a cop car drove up. They pulled to a stop and an officer shone a flashlight down the alley's length.

When they were hit by that light, their group was invisible.

"Do you see anything?" asked one officer.

Everyone stayed absolutely silent. Their eyes were huge, their breathing panicked. Kurt focused like he never had in his life on making sure that every last person was hidden behind illusions. Tina was nothing more than shadows under a fire escape. Puck was a brick wall. Quinn and Mike were the side of a dumpster.

The challenge of trying to maintain so many distinct illusions was immediately apparent. Before, he’d subconsciously masked a conversation between both him and Santana... but they’d been so close they were touching. Trying to maintain two illusions during his escape from home had hurt him, even across the space of a bedroom. The illusions were so temperamental that trying to cover a set of pajamas with even minor distractions had left him humiliated in front of his friends.

Now they had their full group and a van scattered down the length of an alley, and he was trying to mask them all.

Kurt felt a gush of something warm start to pour from his nose and had to choose between crying in pain or collapsing. Only barely able to focus on the idea that they simply could not be found out, he sank silently to the asphalt. Blood dripped and splattered against the ground.

As the source of the illusions, Kurt could see where everyone was: way too far apart. But his powers apparently hid everyone else from each other. Otherwise, someone would have surely noticed his obvious pain. The pounding in his head spiked ever-higher and Kurt screwed his eyes shut. They _could not be seen._ They _could not be seen._

_Kurt?_ he heard Finn ask frantically inside his mind. _Oh my god, are you okay?_

_Too far,_ he thought haltingly. _Get people close. Tell them. One group. Too hard like this. Please._

Blood dripped steadily down. When he tried to raise his head it was wet and warm against his lips, and Kurt slumped again so he wouldn't have to taste it.

If they were seen, their lives would be over. Even if they didn't wind up in a lab, they'd probably get slapped with all of the property damage. They'd be tied to those two women and it'd be terrorism for the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, or whatever the media came up with. They'd be expelled, no school would ever take them....

_drip drip drip drip drip_

He was only vaguely aware of feet moving closer. Finn had managed to gather the group. But Kurt couldn't focus on that. The police were still shining their flashlights right at them. They couldn't be seen. They had to be completely invisible. Totally, utterly invisible. 

His vision started to go black. He wanted to burst out sobbing from the pain between his eyes, and didn't know how much longer he could hold on.

The flashlights from inside the cruiser moved away. "Let's go," the officer said. "We have reports of some men running away with crowbars; another car's on them, but that sounds like bad news. Let's give some backup. I bet they're who we want." A few seconds later they drove on.

Kurt counted backwards from three before he collapsed into a puddle of his own blood. Everyone around him became abruptly visible. They let out a collective sigh of relief before Finn knelt to check on Kurt, and they realized one of their own was prone and bleeding at their feet.

"Oh my god!" several of them said. Kurt could hear everyone trying to see how he was doing, but Finn shoved each newcomer away as they approached.

"Kurt?" Finn asked desperately. "Come on. You awake?"

"Headache," he whispered. His mouth still tasted of blood.

"Move," someone else said. It took Kurt a second to place the voice: Puck's. "Move!" he repeated more forcefully. Finn stumbled to the side as Puck pushed his way over Kurt, and then his worried face filled Kurt's vision. "Do you need to go to the hospital? Come on, don't close your eyes, Kurt. Stay awake."

"Headache went away before," Kurt managed, although the effort left his head swimming. "Just... rest. I think."

"We should really take him to the hospital," someone said.

"But we're all in costume!"

"So? This is more important!"

A pair of hands pried at Kurt's mask. It popped off, stinging for a second, but then the pressure eased. It helped. Puck's face filled his vision again; he'd taken off his mask, too. "Do you want to go to the hospital?"

"No. Home."

"Okay," Puck decided and slid his arms under Kurt. Lifting him like he was nothing, Puck then pressed his chin against his shoulder until he heard the chirp of the communicator. "Artie, we'll ride with you. Kurt can stretch out flat on the floor. Drive fucking _carefully_ , you got me?"

"No, my car," Kurt protested weakly. They couldn't just leave it there.

"Finn'll drive your car," Puck said. He was already walking toward the van and other people who came up were elbowed aside. Realizing he wasn't going to win this, Kurt went slack and tried not to throw up from the seasick-inducing rhythm of Puck's steps. He was warm, solid, and comforting after the cold ground.

"Wait, what happened?" Artie asked. "You all just went quiet and did Kurt get hurt or something?"

"He masked us from the cops and got a killer nosebleed," Puck answered as he reached the van. He was able to hold Kurt with one arm as he opened the door, although it was awkward, and then quickly re-supported him as he climbed in. "Hey," Puck said more gently after he'd laid Kurt down on the flat, broad space needed for Artie to maneuver his wheelchair inside the van. "Seriously, you okay?"

"Can't do that again," Kurt managed to say with a sickly smile. "Ow." He wondered just how terrible he looked. His skin had to be deathly pale, with a fountain of drying red covering his mouth and chin.

Quinn climbed in the shotgun seat. "We're going. Everyone else is riding with Finn. I'm doing directions and watching for any police attention. Puck, you keep an eye on Kurt. Anything happens, I'm finding the nearest hospital on my phone. Artie, drive like this van is full of tiny little babies not wearing their seatbelts."

Kurt felt his skull rock back and forth against the hard floor as the engine roared to life and the van eased out of the alley. He groaned.

"Don't tense up," Puck said quietly. "Gonna move your head a little, okay?"

After a soft assent, Kurt was surprised to feel Puck slip his arm under Kurt's head like a pillow. Puck tugged Kurt gently up until his own body served as further support, and then laid them both flat against the floor. That done, Puck curled slightly around Kurt and braced one foot against the front seats. "Don't slam the brakes," Puck said to Artie, "but at least I'll be able to grab him if I have to."

"Thanks," Kurt said uncertainly.

"I've gotten a concussion before," Puck said with a smile. "It sucked. I don't know if this is like that, but you probably just kept me from getting sent back to juvie. I owe you."

Oh. That made sense, at least. "Glad to help," Kurt said. 

"Guess you're signing off the whole superhero business, huh?" Puck asked. "I guess I can't blame you after that. Too bad. Maybe Santana's who we'd want against the biggest names, but you were really good tonight." Kurt didn't say anything and Puck seemed to take it as a yes. "Hey, Quinn, you got wipes or anything in your purse? There's blood everywhere."

"Here, these are for makeup," she said after a minute of digging through the bag at her feet. "But they should work." Puck tried to lean forward to accept them, but that jostled Kurt. Quinn tossed them, instead.

"Stay still," Puck said as he inspected just how gruesome Kurt looked. "I'll be careful, so let me do it."

"But your hands—"

Seeming to understand his concern, Puck said, "I've got control, don't worry. By now when I concentrate, I don't do anything too hard. And I'll concentrate."

"Thanks." A breath later he felt the moist cloth against his skin and Kurt added, "This is weird."

"We just watched Santana turn into a walking Zippo and wind up naked on the streets of Columbus, and _this_ is weird?" Puck countered as he gently wiped the blood off Kurt's face.

That managed to make Kurt smile. "Point taken." The motion was comforting and his headache wasn't getting any worse, at least. Once Puck seemed convinced that Kurt wasn't concussed, he stopped trying to keep him awake. It would be a long drive, the hum against the floorboards was soothing, and Kurt wanted little more than to fall asleep and wake up with only a shadow of his current pain. His eyes drifted closed. As Kurt fell asleep, he wondered if Quinn had climbed out of her seat and settled next to him. It felt like someone was idly stroking his hair.

* * *

By the time they returned to Lima, Kurt's head had stopped feeling like his brain was about to liquify out through his nose. Instead he simply felt like someone was swirling icepicks in his eyes. The next morning, hopefully, would leave him with nothing worse than "horrible dull throb."

"We're at your house," Artie said. "Just gotta wait for Finn to catch up."

"You make a good pillow," Kurt said as he let his head loll to the side, toward Puck's. Their noses were nearly touching. "We probably shouldn't mention this again."

"Hey, by now I've paid you back for keeping me out of juvie," Puck said lightly. "No prob on my end if we shut up."

Trying to sit up made his vision swirl again and Kurt's plans to pull away from Puck were ruined. He was stuck using Puck's arm as a pillow until the door slid open and Finn climbed inside. "Quinn, you mind clearing out for a second?" he asked her as he closed the heavy side door. The sound echoed and Kurt felt his pain begin to settle firmly in his stomach as nausea.

"Why?" she asked archly. 

"Uh, because Kurt and I need to get dressed in our normal clothes before we go inside, and you're the only girl here."

"Oh," she said. Tilting up her chin, she left through the passenger door like it had been her plan all along.

"I'm glad I wore jeans," Finn mumbled as he shucked his shirt, then withdrew a plaid button-up from a gym bag he'd been toting around in the Navigator. "Puck, can you help? I've got his stuff in here, too." When Puck and Kurt both hesitated, Finn said tightly, "If they've noticed we've parked out here, they're going to be wondering why we're not coming inside. Hurry up."

"Okay," Puck said. "Uh, you fine with...?"

Kurt tried to nod and groaned at the movement. There was no question about it: he was going to throw up at some point in the next five minutes. Hopefully, it could be on the lawn. "Yes." Going limp, he let Puck unzip his jacket and start working on his shoes. Puck really was being gentle, he thought as he felt the hands that could crush stone slowly begin to work his tight leather pants off his legs. When those words entered his mind, Kurt blushed faintly and hoped terrible teenage timing wouldn't make Puck's work suddenly _awkward._ Sure, this was Noah Puckerman, who'd destroyed countless fabulous outfits with garbage and slushies, but he wasn't used to having anyone strip him down.

Finn had pulled on his own clothes by that point, and so he grabbed Kurt's jacket from prior to their adventure and worked it over Kurt's arms. The thin t-shirt he'd worn under his costume's coat stayed on, even though it was sweaty. Kurt couldn't bring himself to care. "So this is us being superheroes," Finn said to Puck with a grin as the two of them kept dressing Kurt like a paper doll.

"It's pretty weird," Puck said back. His grin was even broader, but faded into curiosity as he peeled the leather pants completely away. "No wonder you were a killer kicker. You've got some serious legs."

Thankfully the muscles in his face were still responding, and so Kurt managed to quirk an eyebrow at Puck. Finn's expression was far more openly confused. "Dude," he finally said.

"What?" Puck asked and pulled on Kurt's jeans. Even though they were tight, after those leather things the cotton slid on like a dream. He tugged the waistband over Kurt's hips and then began to fasten the fly.

"I've got it," Kurt said, forcing his arm to cooperate. 

"Oh," Puck said, sitting back. He frowned. The oddity of the scene sank in and he looked puzzled. He glanced at Finn, who still seemed put off over Puck's comment on Kurt's legs. Turning to Artie offered no help, as the boy had been eying him silently sidelong.

"I'm just going to put on his shoes," Finn said, sounding very wary indeed, "and then I'll take him inside. Artie, you mind cramming everyone else in here?"

"In a van with only five seatbelts?" Artie asked dryly. "I'd just be setting myself up to lose my license if someone pulled me over, and...." He caught Finn's tense, annoyed stare. Clearly, Finn was going to take Kurt inside and stay there, rather than running right back out to drive people in the SUV. "And it'll be an adventure, sure."

"Okay," Finn said and slung the bag over his arm. He helped Kurt slowly sit up and Kurt could feel his pulse pound in his forehead. "Puck, get the door?" It slid open and the fresh air helped, at least a little, but Kurt didn't trust himself to stand on his own two feet without falling.

"I can carry him," Puck offered.

"It's gonna be hard enough to explain this," Finn said. "And Burt doesn't like you."

"Why don't he like me?" Puck asked. He sounded genuinely offended.

"Can we do this later?" Kurt asked. Finn refocused, nodded, and helped him to the street. That Kurt even managed to stand made pride swell in him, although he was leaning into Finn like a downed tree. "I look drunk," he said as they wobbled toward the front door without so much as a good-bye to everyone else.

Finn gently guided him. "Hey, that could work—whoa," he said, and just managed to turn Kurt away when nausea overwhelmed him and Kurt threw up the full contents of his stomach into the grass. From the sounds Finn was making, the sight made him want to do the same.

"Sorry," Kurt said as Finn slowly set them back into motion. He wanted some aspirin. "Brain powers suck."

"Don't push so hard," Finn said. "Seriously. You could have really hurt yourself, okay?" With a smile, he added, "Leave the heavy-duty brain powers to me. You can kick ass. Like when you climbed up that fire escape."

"Nngh," Kurt managed. Yes, he'd found his limits as surely as Santana had burned her costume to a crisp and Tina had finally pinned down her abilities. Columbus had been a big learning experience for everyone. Yay.

Finn fumbled for the keys. "Hope the system isn't on, since they know we're coming home," he muttered as he unlocked the front door and they shuffled inside. Behind them, Kurt could hear Artie's van driving off. He really did hope the cops didn't stop them. The house was dark when they walked in, and stayed so when Finn quietly closed and re-locked the door. "Can you do stairs?"

Staring at the seeming mountain made Kurt's head swim. They looked impassable.

"Okay, we'll go slow," Finn said when he saw Kurt's dubious reaction. He slowly approached the staircase, Kurt still leaning against his side. After a few attempts he muttered, "Maybe we should have let Puck come in."

The lights came on. The sudden illumination hurt too much for Kurt to feel panicked over their discovery.

"Kurt?" Burt asked, rushing down the stairs. "Are you okay?" He rounded on Finn when Kurt didn't respond fast enough. "What the hell happened?"

"At the concert," Finn said. "I think there was something in his drink."

Even with his headache, Kurt managed to look with surprise at Finn. Oh, so that's what he'd meant on the front lawn by 'that could work.'

_You should hear what it's like inside his head right now. Getting him scared over something totally non-superhero-y? He'll never ask twice._

Kurt decided to take Finn's word for it, and hoped he wouldn't do any more telepathic communications until his headache was gone. "I really want to go to bed," he slurred.

"Why didn't you take him to the hospital there?" Burt asked more loudly. His voice was just on the edge of frantic, and Carole came sleepily out to join him. Her eyes flew open when she saw what was going on.

"I'm fine," Kurt mumbled. "I just want to sleep it off. I'm fine. Wanted to come home." Couldn't they please stop asking him questions? Answering questions involved talking and remaining upright.

"Why is there blood on his face?" Carole asked when she joined them. Burt looked startled by the question, and she pointed to a few spots around Kurt's nostrils and at the edge of his mouth. Puck must have missed them in the darkness of the van, and in his concern over his son's general state, so had Burt.

"Tried to walk on my own," Kurt said after Finn cast helplessly about for an answer. "Ran into something. Nosebleed. Can I go to bed?" They looked ready to grill Finn more, and Kurt repeated plaintively, "Can I please go to bed?"

"Come on," Burt said with a sigh. He came down to Kurt's other side, and between him and Finn they were able to get Kurt upstairs without losing his balance halfway there. "How could you let something like this happen?" he asked Finn as they slowly helped Kurt to his room.

"Helped as soon as they saw, Dad," Kurt said. "Everyone did. I'll be okay."

"This is what happens in big cities," Carole said, shaking her head. "We never should have let you kids go off on your own, and to a _concert._ A dark room with people serving drinks, it's no wonder they'd try to take advantage."

"There you go," Burt said as he gently lowered Kurt into bed, and then pulled off his shoes and tugged the covers over him. "I'll come check on you soon, okay? Make sure we don't need to take you to the ER, after all."

Kurt found a smile for his worried father. "Feel better already. I promise." 

"Come on," Carole said. "Finn, I want you to tell us everything that happened."

Although Finn shot Kurt a worried look as he was herded out, Kurt was too exhausted to think of any pointers to offer. Trying to keep his eyes open left him dizzy, and it was no use fighting his body any more. Like diving off a vast cliff, Kurt fell into sleep.

* * *

In his dreams, Kurt was in Central Park. The southeast corner surrendered gracefully to the Plaza and Bergdorf Goodman, but real geography ended there. In the impossible nature of dreams, he could see the Empire State Building looming over the Plaza. The Chrysler Building was tucked securely against it. Even the Brooklyn Bridge made an appearance when he looked toward 5th Avenue.

But also in the nature of dreams, he accepted the changes without concern. He looked up, smiled at a starry sky that would never be visible through Manhattan's lights, and waited.

When a pair of strong arms came from behind him and circled his chest, Kurt giggled. In the real city it would be dangerous, but here he knew what was happening. The pitch of his voice distantly surprised him. It was a bit higher than he'd settled into, like it had been when he was younger. "You're late," he said. His voice was _definitely_ higher.

"Sorry," a voice purred into his ear. Who was...?

The question fell away as soon he'd asked it. Dream Kurt knew who was behind him. The real Kurt had his own answer. Either way, he felt confident and there was no need to worry about those warm, strong arms. Kurt heard another whisper and obediently closed his eyes as a kiss was placed below his ear, then on his cheek, and then hot against his mouth. His head tilted up to meet those lips.

When Kurt woke up, it took him a while to realize he still had a headache.

* * *

"Hey," Burt said gently the next morning. Kurt had stayed in bed long enough to be noticed. The pleasant remnants of his dream had worn off and his headache had returned, milder but still intense. "How're you doing?"

"Orange juice and aspirin?" Kurt gave for an answer. With a quick stroke of his hair and worried sigh, Burt nodded and left him in bed.

_These powers are dangerous_ , Kurt thought as he wormed securely back under the covers. He knew Santana had nearly burned down her house, but he'd only seen a few smoke-streaked windows. And she'd hurt things, not her own body. Feeling like he was going to hemorrhage his entire blood volume out through his nose had done a fine job of cranking up the intensity meter on what they faced.

He'd seen photos of psychic heroes trickling one dramatic crimson droplet down their face. When he'd had that same thing happen during his escape from the house, he'd wiped the line of blood away without a second thought. If he had to accept a droplet here and there as a trade-off for invisibility, he would. For it to just... _gush_ like that hadn't been expected, though.

_Why does it happen, anyway?_ Kurt wondered grumpily. It wasn't like people kept their brains stored in their sinus cavities. His quiet grousing gave Burt time to head to the kitchen and back, and Kurt managed to smile at his father when he gently set down the juice glass and pills on the nightstand. "Thanks."

"When I saw you looking like that last night," Burt began shakily, "I was so...." He shook his head. "You're telling me the truth, right? You weren't drinking anything but water or—"

"I promise, Dad, I wasn't drinking alcohol," Kurt said as he caught on. "No alcohol was anywhere near me. _Promise._ "

"And someone still thought he could just...." Burt forced his fists to relax. "Look, I know this wasn't your fault, but I don't want you going anywhere for a while. You can go out with your friends, just stay a little closer. Okay?"

"Okay," Kurt said. There was clearly no use in arguing. He downed his aspirin and most of the glass of orange juice, then laid back down. "I'm going to try to sleep a little more. This headache stuck around."

Burt sighed again and nodded. "This lasts much longer, I am taking you to the hospital. You hear me?" He shook his head, swore under his breath, and then walked out with a few muttered promises to track down whoever thought he could pull this on his son.

Kurt had enough energy to hope that Burt wouldn't actually hunt down everyone who they'd met in Columbus, but the desire to lose his lingering headache to another nap trumped that concern. He shimmed off his jeans and jacket, wishing that he'd bothered to undress himself after he'd been laid on the bed, and folded them on his other nightstand. In his t-shirt and boxers, he slept again.

Noises woke him up from another strange dream about New York. He'd returned to Central Park after sneaking out of an apartment, but the specifics of what he'd seen and who he'd met were already slipping from memory. It took him a few breaths to process exactly what was happening in the waking world: Carole was looking through the bag Finn had dumped in Kurt's room. The bag that had been used when they were swapping clothes.

A block of ice formed in Kurt's gut. Had Finn put their costumes back in there? Their _masks?_ "I'm sorry I woke you," Carole said softly when she realized Kurt was looking at her. "I just... well, I saw that you'd gotten sick last night. I'm doing laundry and I thought I'd see if any of your clothes needed to be washed right away."

"Oh," Kurt said. He swallowed. She didn't seem surprised. Had Finn hidden their superhero gear?

"Doesn't look like there's anything in here," she said. "Go back to sleep. Or would you like me to bring you something else? You haven't had anything to eat yet, right?"

The knot in his stomach began to unravel. Were the costumes really not in there? He wasn't really hungry, but he hadn't eaten since dinner the day before, and he'd thrown that up. "Um. A sandwich or something? I'll be up by this evening, I promise, but...."

"Of course," she said. Carole walked over and kissed Kurt on the forehead, then ruffled his hair. "I don't think you even know how worried we were when we saw you last night. I know you probably wish you could go off to the city again, but you're just going to have to put up with being worried over by your loving parents."

"Too bad," he said, managing to smile. She smiled back and walked out without grabbing anything else for the wash. (Trying to address vomit stains was one thing, but Carole had generally learned better than to touch Kurt's clothes.) After a few beats Kurt grabbed his phone and sent a message to Finn: _Get in here!!!_

"Hey!" Finn said when he poked his head inside. "Are you okay?"

Kurt waved off the question. "Yeah, I'm fine. Or I will be fine. Carole just looked in the bag with the costumes, except the costumes weren't in there. Where are they?" 

"I left them in the van when we changed," Finn said. "By accident. I realized I needed to ask Artie to bring them by, and...." He let out a relieved sigh. "Guess it was a lucky break that I didn't grab them last night, huh?"

"A very lucky break," Kurt agreed and rubbed at his eyes. Everything that had happened the night before had been very, very lucky. It could have gone so wrong for everyone. "Oh. What happened when they talked to you last night? After we got home?"

"I got yelled at. A lot." Finn snorted. "But you know, I read their minds and it was totally different from what they were saying. They weren't really mad at me, they were mad at themselves. It was just easier to yell at me since I was there with you." His brow furrowed. "I guess I didn't realize how much they worry that one of us will get hurt."

"Well, consider this year for me," Kurt pointed out. "And I'm sure they know that someone else in your position on the team got sent to the hospital," he added, remembering Sam's injury. He heard Carole returning with a sandwich and motioned for Finn to be quiet.

"People want to make sure you're okay," Finn said once Carole had set down Kurt's food and then left them alone again. "Can they come by?"

"I'm not an invalid," Kurt said with some annoyance. "Yes, it's fine. They don't need to, but they can if they want." He turned to grab the sandwich, determined to eat something, and hesitated when his fingertips brushed across a picture of Central Park. Of course: the photo album of their trip to Nationals was on his nightstand. He'd probably seen it right before he fell asleep, and his pained mind had latched onto the place like some sort of psychic morphine. 

That made perfect sense, then. After an initial surge of queasiness that threatened to ruin things, Kurt did feel better as he ate. By three bites in he realized that he was actually hungry, and when he polished off the remnants of the sandwich he wished there were more. He hadn't actually dribbled out his brains, he wasn't permanently injured, and his weird "sneak out of a Manhattan apartment when he was _younger_ " dreams had a clear explanation. Things were looking up.

Kurt had just begun to contemplate addressing his abused, neglected skin when a knock sounded on the doorframe. He turned and saw Rachel standing there. She looked incredibly apologetic; seeing him sprawled in bed at one in the afternoon clearly had her worried. For his part, Kurt just tried not to think about how he was in nothing more than an extremely functional t-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. "I came by to see if you were okay," Rachel said quietly. "Is that all right?"

He felt mostly fine by then, but wanted an answer on something else. "Come in and close the door," Kurt said. Though confused, she followed his request and took a seat by the bed. Normally Kurt would care about his appalling state of dress, but there was something far more important. "Are we going to be in trouble?"

Thankfully, Rachel knew exactly what he meant. She must have worried about the same thing. "I checked the news first thing this morning."

"I slept so long that I forgot to," Kurt admitted, put at ease by her general mood and its lack of visible panic. "My brain felt like it just gave out."

"I don't blame you," Rachel said. "Seeing what you...." Her head bowed. "No one should have been put in a position to do that."

"Someone fired a bullet at us," Kurt said. "Everyone faced something bad last night."

"I know, but this was just too... no. We're not going to be in trouble," Rachel answered. "The press reported that it was because of rioters upset over the loss of OSU's coach."

Kurt blinked. "Seriously?"

"It was close enough to the university, a car—well, a motorcycle—was set on fire, and they'd just gotten bad sports news." Rachel smiled humorlessly. "Athletic riots were apparently the go-to explanation for the media. Mostly, anyway."

He didn't like that qualifier. "Mostly?"

She looked at where her hands were folded on her knees. "People in that bar heard fighting outside immediately after two very visible mutants had left it. Some people think they started all the trouble. And from the sound of things, mutants are an even more attractive target than sports fans."

"But they didn't do anything wrong," Kurt said. His brain felt like it was stuck in second gear; maybe he did need to rest a little more. 

"We know that. We know they were victims, nothing more." Rachel looked up and tittered nervously. "I suppose I expected them to fight back. I mean, they're mutants. Surely they had... claws or acid saliva or something; that one girl looked almost like a lizard. But in retrospect, it's a good thing they didn't. Then they really would have taken the blame."

"Yes, they would," Kurt said quietly. 

"Well, I'm sorry to have pushed everyone into joining that fight last night," Rachel said. "We were worried about you during the entire drive back. What I did was wrong and... and you could have gotten so hurt. Everyone could have. I'm so, so sorry," she said as she flashed a wavering smile and then left without a proper farewell.

Kurt was deep in thought, still, as Mercedes stopped by to check on him. He tried to answer her, he really did, but it was like his thoughts were a spiral. Every time he'd broken free of last night, it pulled him right back in.

"You still seem kind of dizzy," Mercedes eventually said, and squeezed his shoulder before she left. "Go back to sleep, okay?"

He did not go back to sleep. He grabbed his phone and started reading news articles about what had gone down in Columbus, and felt both guilty and relieved that they weren't mentioned at all.

"I got a text from Tina earlier," said a familiar voice in the midst of his reading. Kurt was torn between smiling at Blaine's surprise appearance or feeling a keen stab of shame that he was still sprawled under his covers, with hair that had yet to be brushed and his face cleaned only by Quinn's makeup pads. (Once he did lurch out of bed, he would have to preen.) "She told me that dinner tonight was off."

"Sorry," Kurt said as guilt threatened to drown him. _Right_ , he'd blown off Blaine all week with the promise of a date to celebrate his finals being over. He'd struggled to find a reason why Friday night wasn't the right time for that, and now that Saturday was there, he didn't have anything but excuses. "I should have called. But we didn't really have to cancel, I'm feeling much better, we could still—"

"Stop. I'm not worried about dinner," Blaine said with gentle disbelief. As he continued, his voice began to strain with darker emotions. "She said you weren't feeling well, but when I got here your dad said that something _happened?_ You came home dizzy and bloody, and...." He swallowed, unwilling or unable to continue.

"Bloody is an overstatement," Kurt eventually said. "It was just my nose. I walked into a pole."

A pole: so that was what lying to his boyfriend felt like when it moved past simple delaying tactics. Kurt couldn't say that he enjoyed it. Unlike the lying he'd done to his father a week earlier, Kurt didn't put up an illusion of a controlled expression. (He doubted he'd be able to illusion himself for days.) He was terrible with masking his lie because of it, and Blaine stayed quiet for a long time before he said anything.

"What really happened?" Blaine asked levelly.

"I told you, I walked into a pole," Kurt said. But Blaine's suspicion made him nervous and twitchy, and it sounded even less convincing than before.

"So out of everyone there," Blaine said, "you were the only person to wind up with a bloody nose. You were the only person to have someone single them out." He laughed bitterly, sounding like he wanted to cry. "Are you trying to protect me or something?"

Things clicked into place and Kurt gasped. "Oh, no. No, no. I swear, it was nothing like that."

"Don't lie to me." Kurt swallowed at Blaine's low, intent words. His eyes flicked to the door and back, and Blaine turned to see it standing open. "Should I close it?"

"I'm only allowed to close it with girls in the room, now," Kurt mumbled. He glanced nervously at the hallway and dropped his voice to a whisper. Don't lie to him, huh; too bad 'by omission' still counted. "Did you see the stories about the, um, riot in Columbus?" 

"From the mutants," Blaine said. It was hard not to wince at the lies spread by the media. "Of course. I saw the report and was worried that you were there, but then I mapped it and it wasn't anywhere near where a concert would be."

"We got bored and left," Kurt said. "We wanted to wander around the city and got caught up in things. That's why I didn't tell my parents what really happened. They could handle one dangerous person better than the idea that I was in a... in a riot with lots of angry people. And this way no one else had to tell their parents that they could have been hurt, too." The lie was terrible. Just awful. The break in his voice midway through should have been a dead giveaway.

But just like Finn had told Burt what he wanted to hear, Blaine was so relieved at the lie that he latched onto it. Kurt hadn't been the target of a hate crime. Some big, threatening shadow in a club hadn't tried to rape him. He'd simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, as any other person could have been. It was still scary, but it could have happened to anyone. It wasn't personal. It wasn't _anything_ but bad luck, and there was a strange comfort in that. 

"Don't scare me like that," Blaine said with a rush of exhaled air, then smiled. He gently hugged Kurt and kissed him high on one temple.

Kurt, meanwhile, wondered if it was possible to vomit from guilt. Desperately wanting to change the subject, he said, "You know, I saw them. The mutants."

"So they really were there," Blaine said in surprise, although he had the sense to still keep his voice soft.

"They weren't doing anything wrong," Kurt said. "They were being attacked and they just barely managed to run away. It's so unfair that the news is blaming them."

Blaine shrugged once. What was to be done? Those prejudices were deep, after all; it was only to be expected that they would be pulled out as a convenient scapegoat. And they'd just had a conversation based on unfortunate knowledge of how the world worked. "It is unfair," he agreed when Kurt seemed to want an answer.

"I thought they'd fight back," Kurt said. It should have been breathtakingly awkward to be in bed in his underwear with Blaine sitting right beside him, but his mind was consumed with memories of their ill-advised adventure. "They were _very_ clearly mutants, trust me. But they didn't do anything that a regular person couldn't do."

"Most mutants are like that," Blaine said.

Kurt started. That had to be wrong. Mutants on the news—except for these scapegoats—earned attention because they were superheroes or supervillains. Occasionally there would be stories about some child entering puberty who'd accidentally killed his family with his awakening powers, or who'd seen her own life end when they burned out of control. 

Sensing his confusion, Blaine explained, "I wrote a history report on them. We were supposed to write about something in the Twentieth Century, and a friend had already snagged the Civil Rights Movement. We decided to combine research forces. I took the rise of mutantkind in the Sixties."

Fine, whatever. "Mutants have powers," Kurt protested. "That's what makes them mutants."

"No, the mutant gene makes them mutants. It's actually a very tiny sliver of the population that has powers like you see on the news. The vast majority just have very weak powers that certainly wouldn't be useful in a fight, or... or have absolutely nothing more to show than a disfigured body." Blaine sounded a little proud of the information he was able to bring thanks to his convenient research project.

Kurt knew mutants were targeted for hated. He'd been able to rationalize his indifferent reaction with the knowledge that, unlike gays or immigrants or whoever else, they could easily defend themselves. Because of their eyebeams and weather control and whatnot, they'd never really been a group for which he spared much sympathy. It wasn't right, but his time and energy was limited. Focusing on the people who were more likely to be victims only made sense.

There had almost been two victims outside that bar, and there wasn't an eyebeam to be seen. 

For all he knew, their superhero group might still be mutants. But if so, he added grimly as he thought back to those two terrified faces, they were the lucky ones. 

Blaine was still talking, Kurt realized suddenly, and tried to catch up. "...even have a neighborhood of their own in New York. They call it Mutant Town, appropriately enough. Or District X," he added, probably pulling in a footnote that he'd thrown in for an extra point from the teacher.

New York. Kurt leapt on the new topic, wanting to get away from the discussion of mutants and superpowers. "I had a dream about you last night," he said lightly.

"Really?" Blaine said. He seemed intrigued. "What were my powers?"

"No, no." Kurt shook his head once and was pleased to not feel a surge of pain from the movement. He was definitely healing up. "You reminded me with the mention of New York."

"Oh!" From that, this was an even better topic than mutants. "What were we doing?" They'd talked about many things to do in the city, mostly centered on what Kurt had seen during his trip there.

After a quick glance back to his photo album cover, Kurt replied, "We were in Central Park. It was night. I was waiting for you near the Plaza, and you surprised me with...." He trailed off as a memory bubbled to the surface and burst, in the peculiar way that dreams were recalled. Tilting his head, he finished, "You were taller than me."

"I'll try not to take that personally," Blaine laughed. "Not everything in a dream is wish fulfillment."

"This was definitely a strange dream," Kurt confirmed. "It felt like I was remembering things, more than seeing anything new. Maybe... maybe I had this dream when I was in New York and it simply repeated last night? Deja vu all over again." 

"Maybe."

"Oh, uh, hey," said a new voice that Kurt had very definitely not expected to hear. Puck looked between them from his awkward, uncertain stance in the doorway. "Sorry, Finn let me in. I guess he didn't know you were here," he said with a nod in Blaine's direction. "I just wanted to see if you were okay, Kurt."

That took Blaine by clear surprise. His few encounters with Puck had been pleasant, but not the type to give the impression that Puck would ever come for a visit. "How thoughtful," he said after that beat. "Kurt, you have very considerate friends."

"Puck carried me back to the car," Kurt explained as Puck approached and stood next to where Blaine was sitting. Although time had eaten up the height advantage Puck once held, from the bed Kurt was forced to look up to meet his eyes. And since Puck had helped, it only seemed fair to acknowledge him, even if craning his neck did bring back a hint of a headache. With a grateful smile, Kurt looked up at Puck's face and began to say, "I owe him a...."

_Deja vu all over again_ , he thought dizzily and nearly fell back against the pillow. 

Both boys' hands landed on his shoulder at the same time.

"I'm fine," Kurt said. "That was just...." He shook his head and almost missed the strange look Blaine gave Puck as he took in the position of their hands. "That was strange. Maybe I'm dehydrated."

"I'll get him a drink," Puck instantly said and vanished toward the bathroom.

Blaine's eyebrows rose. "He's nice. I know about books, covers, and judging, but I wouldn't have expected it."

"He's gotten a lot better," Kurt confirmed. Puck returned after that with a half-full glass of water. When he handed it over, he looked hopeful in a strange, puppy dog sort of way. "Thank you, Puck. And for last night."

Nervous at what Kurt might have just given away, Puck asked, "And... how much have you talked about last night?"

"Blaine knows all about how we got caught up in those riots with the mutants," Kurt said. Guilt raked claws across his heart once more. "Or the sports fans, or whatever was going on." His heart ached with the lie.

"Right," Puck agreed. His sigh of relief was a little too dramatic. 

"Did you tell Lauren about the riot?" Kurt asked carefully.

"Yep. That's all I told her about where I was." They shared a knowing smile, and Blaine's brow furrowed like it had when their hands landed on Kurt's shoulder together.

When his father walked by, the open door requirement let Burt see both boys next to Kurt's bed. He backtracked and frowned at the sight inside. "Hey, uh, Puck."

Puck turned. He practically snapped to attention as he did. "Yes, sir?"

Not laughing was a challenge. _Sir?_

"I didn't know you were here," Burt said. His gaze flicked up and down the boy, lingering on his mohawk. "Did Finn let you in?"

"Yes, he did. I just wanted to see how Kurt was doing after last night. I won't be long." Okay, this was just weird and wrong, like when Nelson Muntz started wearing sweater vests to date Lisa Simpson.

"Well, uh." Burt frowned again. He clearly wanted to say something but couldn't quite find it. "Thoughtful of you," he said, sounding like that was pulling teeth, and walked on.

"Yeah, Finn was right," Puck muttered. "That guy seriously doesn't like me." In one of the strangest things Kurt had ever seen, Puck—the same boy who'd filled baked goods with controlled substances—actually seemed _sad_ about that. "What'd I do?"

"Um," Kurt offered. Blaine simply seemed intrigued at all of the tension rattling around the room, like he was watching some sort of very mild domestic soap opera.

"No, really?" Puck insisted.

After gauging that Puck really seemed to want an answer, Kurt rattled off, "Well... vandalized our house, treated me _horribly_ just because you could, cheated with the girlfriend of the boy who is now his stepson, and landed in juvenile detention."

"Yeah, but... I meant lately," Puck finished, shifting his weight. 

"I didn't know you were one of the people who gave Kurt trouble," Blaine said in a clear, almost challenging tone. Oh no. That was the sound of a button being pushed.

"I'm not," Puck said shortly.

"But you were?"

"That... look, it was a long time ago." Puck's nostrils flared like a bull's. "Whatever. Kurt, glad you're okay. I'm gonna take off before your dad comes back holding a baseball bat." With a flat look for Blaine, he nodded once more at Kurt before heading for the door and tromping down the stairs. Fantastic. Kurt definitely _needed_ seething dislike between the two of them, or whatever that exchange would become after a bit of percolating. Really, his life didn't have enough complications at the moment.

"He's fine," Kurt reassured Blaine once they heard the front door close. "Really."

"I don't know why I reacted like that," Blaine admitted. "You're obviously on good terms with him now. I just... I just got put on edge, for whatever reason, and perhaps I made a bit of a fool of myself. Ah, well. I can't imagine we'll have much reason to interact, but I'll try to smooth things over the next time we meet." Relief was clear on Kurt's face, as he suddenly really wanted the two of them to get along, and it echoed in Blaine's expression. "Well, I should probably let you rest more, if you need to." Kurt didn't, but desperately wanted to clean up. "We'll make up that dinner with Mike and Tina when you're up for it," Blaine said and kissed him affectionately on the forehead. "Don't push, though. You could have gotten hurt, and don't do that to yourself."

"You're so thoughtful," Kurt said. The dreamy air to his voice was only partially forced. "Love you, talk to you soon." When the words echoed and Blaine departed, Kurt slumped back against his pillow for one long beat. Before the trip to Columbus, he'd thought making costumes for a group of teenage superheroes was weird. No. His life had become _significantly_ more weird in a day's time, and everything in it was pointing toward one conclusion.

Kurt scooped up his phone, clicked through his contacts, and found a rarely-used number. He didn't send a text. It was probably better not to leave any sort of record. "Hey, Mike," he near-whispered, unsurprised that the boy had already replaced the phone that Artie had destroyed. They might all have few close friends outside of New Directions, whether they were seen as a loser or popular, but Kurt doubted that anyone would want to go a day being cut off from even that small group.

"Kurt!" Mike said excitedly. "You're okay, right? Finn told all of us that you were doing better."

"Yes, I'll be fine. Don't worry." That was a funny thing to tell the boy who'd nearly flown off like a jetplane. "Mike, I know Brittany has been rather blasé about what's been going on. And then you, Quinn, and I... well, they practically had to drag us there."

"Yeah," Mike said. "Last night, when the police cars were closing in... all I could hear in my head was ' _please_ don't let my dad find out.'"

"What did you think before that, though?" Kurt asked. "When we were helping those mutants?"

It took a while for Mike to reply. "I thought that if people were getting hurt and no one cared about it... maybe we should care."

"Yeah." Kurt's fingers played across the bedcovers. "Did you talk to Quinn, by any chance?"

"I think everyone's talked to everyone." Mike laughed once. "She said hitting that guy in the back of his head felt _good._ Like it was worth doing."

"It really did," Kurt agreed. They let the line sit idle. "We were terrible at it, though."

"We were. We should practice more before next time." Neither of them questioned the existence of a next time. They had to look out for the people no one cared about: the forgotten, the freaks. They had to make use of what they could offer. And perhaps they could even make it up to the city of Columbus' budget, somehow. "I'll let you know the schedule."

"Thanks. I'll be up by tonight, but I'll probably have to stick around the house for a while."

"Sure thing. I'll tell people I talked to you. And Finn will tell people. And... I'm sorry for rambling. We were just really scared when we saw you last night. It was really _real_ , you know?"

"Yeah," Kurt said. His lips curved, just barely. "Okay. Talk to you later, bye." He clicked off the phone at Mike's farewell and studied the far wall for a long while. 

Things were real, now. They'd better prepare.


	10. Montage

It was time to get serious. Three days after Columbus they reconvened in Rachel's basement. It had quickly become their base of operations, as her fathers were away yet again on a quick business trip, just like they'd been for much of the team's young history. Although she'd gathered the team on her own volition, her decision to focus had rippled through everyone once they were together.

"There was property damage in the city," Rachel said. "Not as bad as it could have been, but...."

Everyone looked at Santana and she awkwardly shifted her weight. "I lost my temper, yeah, I know. But I thought Brittany got shot." Brittany threaded her fingers through Santana's and squeezed. Though she looked a bit embarrassed, Santana didn't pull away.

"I think what Rachel is saying," Finn said, "is that we have to make up for what we did there."

"And we have to make sure that if someone wants to threaten anyone like that again," Mercedes added, "they'll think twice before they do." Several people nodded at her.

Rachel stood unchallenged at the center of the group. Santana, cowed by the accidental destruction she'd caused, was willing to let her lead for the moment. "Who's been using their powers a lot? Or has really tested themselves to see what they can do?" 

Kurt's hand shot up first. No one would be able to trump that showcase he'd put on with the bloody nose, not for a long time. The only person who'd come so close to a power limit was Santana moving into full fire form, and her hand was next. Puck raised his; Rachel knew that he'd been constantly lifting things. Finn had been practicing mindreading and Artie had been building gadgets, and theirs were the last and final hands to raise.

That made sense. Not everyone had powers suited for everyday living. Telepathy was much easier to use around the house than glowing forcefields, pure chaos, or flight. Or explosive singing, she added sadly.

"So, this will be good for everyone," Rachel decided after looking around the room. "My suggestion of running small, manageable missions... yes, this will be perfect. The people who've used their powers a lot can further refine them. The people who haven't been integrating their powers into their daily lives, well... we can practice on these trips. Everyone, start looking up new places we might want to visit. We'll need to take a few days off anyway, or our parents might start to suspect something. And, um, Kurt needs to do some costume repairs?" she added hopefully.

"Fine, fine," Kurt said. "And Santana, I checked. That Brooklyn store does have flame-proof material." She smiled. "I'll tell you how much to ship to me on your credit card," Kurt finished smoothly and her good mood vanished. But she did nod. Perfect: one more thing taken care of.

"Okay!" Rachel said cheerfully. "Then I think we're in great shape." Everyone looked attentively at Rachel and her heart swelled at the sight of _her_ team. Quinn's distant moodiness had withered at the plight of those two mutant women. Mike and Tina bumped fists and promised they'd be the best crimefighting duo ever. Kurt... well, he'd told her that he couldn't risk leaving town for at least a couple of weeks, not with his worried parents, but he did have all those repairs and customizations to do.

They really were all on the perfect path.

"All right, everyone!" Rachel said with a fresh wave of excitement. "I expect to see at least two worksheets from everyone by tomorrow."

* * *

When they met the next day Rachel asked everyone for their completed worksheets, but they apparently thought she wasn't serious about that assignment.

That would soon be corrected.

"I just can't believe you were so boring with our costumes," Santana said as she flopped on the couch next to Kurt, who was sketching over a loose outline of their standard outfit template. "I mean, you're _you_. It's June and you just asked Rachel to turn up the AC so you could keep on that stupid red velvet blazer."

"One, it's a key part of the ensemble, and I'm avoiding illusions until my brain's all healed up." He erased something on his sketch and frowned at it. "And two, if I were going to fight fires, I'd carry an axe." Rachel didn't follow where he was going with that, but stayed quiet.

Santana snorted. "You would carry an axe to school if someone slapped a Prada logo on it."

"No, I wouldn't," Kurt said with a smile. "They expel you for weapons." She made a face at him and he continued, "Look, I wear boots in the snow and I put on a coverall when I work at the garage, and so I would bring the proper tools to fight a fire. When I fight crime? I want head to toe coverage."

"Good for you," Santana said. "Meanwhile I will be perfectly fine with not being covered, since I turn into lava or something. Give me more cleavage."

With an annoyed glance, he erased his new line and redrew it further down the page.

Rachel tried not to feel bad about having given Kurt suggestions for her own costume as she moved further around the room. "I think I'm safe for her not finding out," Puck said to Mercedes as Rachel came within hearing range of their conversation. "I mean, now I can win when I arm wrestle Lauren, but don't worry. I figured out how to make it feel believable."

She rolled her eyes. "You still gotta let her win now and then, Puck, or she'll suspect something."

"But I like winning," he grumbled. Rachel tried not to smirk and moved on. Brittany and Quinn were deep in a conversation about looking out for other women in trouble. A technology brainstorming session between Mike and Artie already had two full pages of possible inventions. Most of it was quite encouraging, Rachel thought as she finished a circuit around the room and sat next to Finn on the couch. He was ignoring the ongoing conversation about costumes, which now included Tina and her sketch. His silence wasn't a surprise; put bluntly, Finn looked awful.

"This sucks," Finn said as he rubbed his eyes. Rachel looked at him sympathetically, as the circles there were so dark that he looked as if he'd been punched. "I need to practice my thinking stuff so I can block thoughts from coming in."

"Oh," Rachel said as she looked with concern around their large group. All of those thoughts together could certainly be overwhelming. And considering the last time someone had been overwhelmed by his psychic abilities.... "Are we loud? Do you have a headache?"

"It's okay when I'm awake," Finn said. He flashed a dark look at Kurt. "Stuff floats in during my dreams, though." After a few pointed throat clearings, when Rachel realized Finn's drawn look came not from telepathic pain but exhaustion, Kurt turned scarlet and Finn finished, "Yep."

"Oh god. Um. Was it...?"

Finn smiled thinly. "No, the Kirk guy from the new Star Trek."

Kurt hesitated. His eyebrows rose abruptly and he said with a little less embarrassment and a great deal more humor, "Oh, _right._ "

"I can never watch that movie again," Finn grumbled.

Tina grinned enormously at Kurt. "Nice."

"Um, not to dig up bad memories," Kurt began delicately, "but was it in New York?"

Finn looked irritated at the continuing discussion, but then considered it and shook his head. "No. It was on the Enterprise. The dream was full of lens flares."

"I'm actually a little relieved," Kurt said. "Every night since Columbus it's been all New York, all the time. I was beginning to wonder if I'd fried a synapse or something." He caught Finn's new frown. "What?"

"I guess that explains it," Finn said thoughtfully. "I've had New York dreams, too. They were probably bleeding over from you."

"Wait," Santana said as she looked up from her costume sketch. "This is one hell of a coincidence."

Kurt gawked. "You too? Well, I realized that I went to sleep looking at that photo album. Maybe we're all remembering when we thought we were headed for bigger and brighter things at Nationals?"

"But I was in _Brooklyn_ ," Santana said after a second. "We only ever went to Manhattan. Why would it feel like I was having a dream about living in Brooklyn?"

"Maybe your subconscious is on a budget," Kurt said.

After pondering it a bit more, Santana shrugged and seemed to let things go. Three people all dreaming about New York was odd, but Finn's could be explained by telepathic spillover. And Santana and Kurt, well... it was a city that many of them had fallen for. If they'd both been having dreams about turning into rabbits or living in Slovenia, that would certainly be worthy of a double-take. But dreaming about New York wasn't especially notable.

"Everyone," Rachel said when she opened her laptop. "I think it's time to make some serious plans as to where we're going next. Only two of you emailed me with suggestions, and I took all of those into account when I plotted out possible patrol routes." She smiled sweetly at those two people. "Thank you, Artie and Mike." Then she glared at all who'd stumbled on their assignment.

"I was busy recovering from performing a Carrie reenactment with my nose," Kurt told her flatly.

"I was busy, um, dealing with that," Finn said.

"I forgot," Puck said, shrugging.

"I didn't want to," Santana said and frowned at a hangnail.

Perhaps she'd given Santana a bit too much credit for cooperating, Rachel thought as she settled in and showed everyone the map she'd put together. They had a bevy of locations to choose from, all of which seemed considerably safer than the mess they'd made of Columbus. Most people looked impressed at the work she'd done. One, though, only glanced at the map before pulling back. "Nuh uh," Santana said, shaking her head. 

Tension gripped Rachel's skull. Really? _Really?_ They had a clear goal to work toward, now. Shouldn't they be able to cooperate by this point? "Is there a problem?" she asked tightly.

"Yeah," Santana said and stabbed her finger at where Lima rested on the Google Maps page. "Okay, so we're not going to do any superheroics in town." She brushed Rachel's hand away from the touchpad and zoomed out a few times until they were looking at northern Ohio. "So instead you're saying that we're going to work here, here, here...." Her finger pointed to more places around their hometown. "If anyone pays attention, what are they all still centered on?"

"Lima," Rachel realized. "You're right." 

"Our big explosive entrance was in Columbus," Santana said. "We should make it look like we're based there. People are paying attention to the city. If we give that impression right now, they might actually pick up on it."

"That's going to be a lot of driving," Artie said unhappily, although he didn't argue with her conclusion. "Guys, I dunno if I can get away with buying that much gas."

"Same here," Kurt said, staring at the map. "Or even getting out of town very much, after how worried my parents were. Especially if we're committing to going east of Columbus, or to Toledo or Dayton, or...."

"We won't need big cars," Finn said thoughtfully. "Because we should split up."

Mercedes began to say something, but Tina stopped her. "Wait, hear him out. We're not in a horror movie. I hope."

With a grin, Finn continued, "It was really hard to figure out to manage eleven people all together, right? Or even transport them. This way we can use smaller groups to tackle smaller things, we won't have to come up with big group alibis...."

"That makes sense," Rachel said. He looked proud at the praise, and she gave him a moment to revel before turning back to Santana. "And after all, we do have multiple potential leaders." 

They did.

Rachel was the captain.

Finn could be her lieutenant, of course. With a notably gracious move, she decided Santana could be one as well.

Everything was settling in _so_ nicely, Rachel thought happily as she looked around the room. Now Puck had settled next to Kurt on the couch to talk about his costume, and they were both laughing over whatever he suggested. Kurt's nose even scrunched up, and Rachel flashed back to when Puck had carried him to Artie's van with tremendous care. Who would have ever expected them to get along so well? 

If those two could bump shoulders and lean in close as they talked, surely anything was possible for their ragtag group. They were on track. They could balance leadership, powers, and team dynamics. But, Rachel remembered as she checked her calendar and saw something marked down for that evening, they also needed to balance their normal lives.

Otherwise, people might start to wonder. And as Santana had reminded them, you didn't want to raise any suspicions.

* * *

"No, really," Mike laughed. The setting for their triple date was popular; the crowd threatened to drown out their voices and they had to lean in to be heard. Rachel supposed that spoke well of the food. "I'm the one who suggested this place, why would I mind coming here?"

"I was sort of hoping for burgers," Tina said as they watched the dim sum carts make their way toward them. "Big, juicy, 'the cow is still crying' burgers."

Rachel made a horrified face at Tina as Finn rested his chin in his hands and seemed to dream of hamburgers. When she'd heard that a double date involved Blaine, a _civilian_ , a sudden fear seized Rachel that Kurt, Tina, and Mike would blow their cover. She'd invited herself and Finn along, banking on the quartet being too polite to turn them down. They were, but she hadn't realized that it would entail going along with the plans they'd already made.

"We just didn't want to make you feel like we, ah...." Blaine considered his words but couldn't find where to go next.

Kurt finished with a smirk, "Like we assumed Mr. Chang and Ms. Cohen-Chang would take us out for Chinese food."

"That would be it," Blaine confirmed.

"Don't worry, I love this place," Mike said as he sat up straight in his seat. A cart was almost there. "It's just that when I go with my parents, it's all 'oh, the food isn't hot enough,' 'they steamed it too long,' 'this needed more time.'" Then he pointed at something and waited for it to be deposited on their table.

Tina, Kurt, and Blaine all followed suit. Finn watched the proceedings with confusion, and then looked back to the spread of food on the cart. "Wait, we just point at food and you give it to us?"

"Yes," the server said patiently. "What do you want?" Soon she was carefully placing six different items in front of Finn, who looked overwhelmed at the bounty.

"It's like a buffet that delivers," Finn said with wonder as he began moving individual pieces onto his plate.

"Excuse me," Rachel said, clearing her throat. "Which dishes are vegan?"

The server considered the question. "This one is vegetarian."

"No, not vegetarian, vegan." A blank stare was her only answer, and Rachel waved her on. She _really_ should have asked them where they were going on their date. Sipping her tea, Rachel wondered how many cups it would take to fill her up, and whether she would slosh audibly when she walked to the car.

"Oh my god," Finn mumbled through a mouth half full of food. A bitten dumpling was in his hand, bursting with barbecued pork drenched in some heavy sauce. "This is better than sex." Rachel cleared her throat pointedly, and it took Finn a few more chews to realize what her problem was. He swallowed and said, "I didn't mean with you."

Mike and Blaine politely hid their smirks behind their hands, but Tina and Kurt couldn't keep themselves from laughing.

Finn apparently decided that talking was only going to make things worse, and dove back into his food. Tina stole a piece off Mike's plate. Blaine carefully held out a small spring roll with his chopsticks and Kurt let it be placed in his mouth. And Finn... Finn continued to look like he'd discovered a church based entirely around sex. On Christmas.

Rachel started work on her second cup of tea.

Finn finished his pork buns and leaned over to whisper, "I mean, with... how sex _might_ be with you. I just... sorry, these are really good."

She managed a short laugh. "Then keep eating, Finn. Enjoy." Beaming at her, he did. She'd have to suggest that he take some platonic outings to this restaurant. Clearly he would want to come back, and just as clearly she would never return.

Taking the opportunity to study Finn, Rachel felt herself smiling. When Finn's powers first appeared he'd heard stray thoughts, but now they were in a crowded restaurant with the distraction of food and he seemed fine. They were all keeping an eye on Kurt for any illusory outfit changes, but he'd stayed static. Mike hadn't started floating off his chair. Given time with their powers, people really seemed to be settling into them.

"We should have asked Puck and Lauren to come, too," Finn said and licked sauce off his thumb. He saw the poor reaction from one member of their party and asked, "What?"

"Blaine doesn't like Puck," Kurt smirked. Blaine looked a little distressed at the blunt description.

"Ignore the hair," Tina said. "He's cool now, except when he's obnoxious."

"He and Kurt were so thoughtful when they worked together this spring," Rachel said, recalling the massive effort the two of them had put into making her feel more confident with herself. Her words didn't seem to put Blaine at ease, though.

"And he's like my best friend," Finn said, pointing at Blaine with a piece of... something. "So he'll be around the house, and you need to get used to him. If Burt lets him come by this summer, anyway."

"Kurt, I think you overstated that a little," Blaine said, clearly wishing Kurt had never said anything. "He's just... not the type of person I typically spend time with. Or that I'd expect you to spend time with. What exactly did you do with him this spring?" There was an odd little ripple of tension to the words.

Tina interrupted before Kurt could say anything. "You know who else we should have invited? Santana and Brittany. Just to say, like... hello, we know."

Blaine looked thoroughly confused as he tried to follow the gossip of McKinley, and the Puck discussion was left behind. "Wait, are they officially a couple? I didn't know that."

"They're not. Maybe. I don't know." Tina shook her head. "There's drama there, but we've known they're totally doing it for... what, a year? Year and a half? Brittany told us."

Blaine looked even more startled. "I didn't even know they were out."

"They're not," Kurt said. "Yes, I know Brittany said that, but... ugh, it's complicated. And so we're not going to jump them and hang up a big, glitter-covered banner to force it, all right?" Some people still looked uncertain, and he cleared his throat until they nodded. "Good. My dad knew, but he still let me come to him. It's the right thing to do."

Everyone quieted as they returned to eating. (Or, in Rachel's case, drinking.) Finn spoke up after swallowing some new kind of roll. "So do we pair off Mercedes with Artie or Sam?" At their blank reaction he continued, "It's only them and Quinn left, so... oh, right. Can't really stick Quinn back with Sam after, uh." _After she cheated on Sam with you, right,_ Rachel finished grimly, and only halfway hoped that Finn wasn't listening to her thoughts. Grandly, Finn finished, "So then... Mercedes and Sam, and Quinn and Artie!"

"In other words," Mike said, "you think we should just take over the restaurant with the biggest group date ever."

"Could be fun," Finn said with a grin and popped something new into his mouth. He chewed a few times and froze.

"He has no idea what he just ate," Tina giggled.

Rachel gasped as Finn yanked the napkin off her lap and spit something into it. "I think I just ate grass," Finn gagged, and then reached for another safe, reliable meat bun to clear away the taste. He managed to shove the entire thing in on one push.

Chuckling, Blaine shook his head and ate his congee without comment. When Kurt returned the favor of holding out a piece of something with his chopsticks, Blaine swallowed it gladly. Mike and Tina shamelessly picked off each other's plates. And then, like the gates of heaven opening, a cart rolled by with simple plates of steamed vegetables. At least she wouldn't go home starving, Rachel thought as she started shoveling them into her mouth.

"To being free of classes," Kurt said once they were all waiting at the same time. He lifted his teacup for a toast, and Rachel was reminded of how this was all supposed to be a congratulatory dinner for Blaine making it through his finals. After they'd clinked the cups together, he kissed his boyfriend lightly, not bothering to look around at the nearby tables, and then added, "To a very memorable summer."

"To pushing ourselves," Rachel added. It didn't really fit with what Kurt had said, but no one thought twice about those words coming from her.

"And to finding ourselves," Tina added. 

"To flying high," Mike said impishly, and they both giggled at each other.

"To, ah...." Finn looked around the table and smiled broadly when he saw a plate holding another of his favorite dumplings. "To coming here again."

"To staying safe?" Blaine asked Kurt, who nodded, abashed. "Good. And thank you, everyone, for a great dinner. I don't think I've ever had such a nice ending to a school year."

"Yeah," Tina said, grabbing one of the last bits left for herself. "It's been fun."

Soon they'd paid and were heading out the door into the warm June evening. _Sorry I screwed up a few times in there,_ Rachel heard in her head. She shot Finn a smile and squeezed his hand as he continued, _I'm trying._

_I know you are. Did you do what we talked about?_

The other couples ignored them as they held their silent conversation. Finn grinned at Rachel and nodded. _I dug deep into Blaine's brain a few times and he doesn't suspect anything. Seems like he totally bought the riot excuse that Kurt gave him._

_Glad to hear it._

Finn frowned a bit, and then tilted his head at her. _Do you think it's right for me to just scan him like that, though? I mean, I did that at home, but that's because I thought we might be in trouble._

It could definitely be seen as an abuse of power, but what was to be done? They had to know. _This could cause trouble for everyone if it goes wrong, Finn. Just look at it that way. We could be in danger. So could he. We're just keeping all of us safe._

Though Finn still seemed a bit uncertain, he nodded. The ethics of superheroics: Rachel supposed she should have added another section to their workbooks. Oh well. So long as everything stayed at their current equilibrium, nothing too bad could happen. Right?

_Oh geez, Rachel, don't think things like that._

"We'll be fine," she promised and patted his hand. Blaine glanced back from the shotgun seat in confusion, clearly thinking he'd missed something else.

Right. Don't tempt fate, don't slip up. 

Clearly, they needed more practice.

* * *

As she prepared the next day for launching their full offensive, Rachel mentally checked off points in her head. The date had gone perfectly. Control over their powers had been amply demonstrated. Blaine was placated with no lingering suspicion, and any potential relationship issues from Kurt pulling back this week seemed to have been smoothed over. She could only hope that their upcoming missions would unfold just as well.

"We decided that you need to date Sam," Finn told Mercedes. (It was proving a little difficult to keep him focused on those missions.)

"What?" Mercedes asked. Her eyes were wide and she swallowed audibly. "Um. Why do I need to date Sam?"

"He was just trying to pair off everyone," Kurt said airily, "and putting Quinn back with Sam wasn't an option for about a dozen different reasons." He saw Quinn's dark look from across the basement and said, "Oh, like you've never talked about people when they're not in the room."

"It did come up for discussion," Rachel confirmed as she pulled on her new jacket and beamed at the sight in the mirror. It was still practical, but Kurt had given her a more personal style. She'd gotten the first of the overhauls, possibly because of their friendship. Or because of how insistent she'd been. "You were cute together at prom, Mercedes. Really, you should consider it."

"And he'd like that place we went to last night," Kurt said. "I have this suspicion that it's going to be the go-to date spot whenever people aren't up for a carb overload at Breadstix."

"No such thing!" Santana called from across the room.

"At practice he told me he thinks you're hot," Finn said. "On that day when we saw you guys in the stands, remember? Then I read his mind just to see if I could, and, uh...." He started laughing. "He _really_ liked the shirt you were wearing that day, if you know what I mean."

Rachel giggled at Mercedes. This was perfect! Their prom arrangement had been so fortunate. But why did she look so upset, then?

"I... um...." Mercedes' eyes darted between them. Finn's brow furrowed and Rachel realized that he was probably probing Mercedes' brain for whatever was wrong. After a few seconds of that, his eyes widened. Mercedes gasped and lunged forward to press her hand against his mouth. "You stay quiet, Finn Hudson."

"Too hawd," Finn mumbled as she pinned his lips securely against his teeth. "Ow."

"Mercedes?" Kurt asked. "What in the world is going on?"

"I... guys, I... it's just that...."

"Ow," Finn said again and broke away. "I was just trying to help by reading your mind," he said. "Sorry."

"Sam and I have been dating since prom," Mercedes said in a squeaky rush. Her eyes slammed shut by the end and it took her a few breaths to risk opening one.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Kurt asked. He sounded hurt.

"I don't know! Because... because of Monica and Chandler!" Mercedes flopped hopelessly against the couch cushions. "They kept their dating a secret because they didn't want their friends all up in their business. And you just showed me that you guys love to get up in people's business."

"But we could have invited you to dim sum," Kurt said in a tiny voice. "You didn't have to lie."

"Lie?" she repeated. "Excuse me, am I talking to the boy who explained away all his bumps and bruises with either a roofie or a riot?" At how distressed that left Kurt, she added apologetically, "Look, I'm sorry. But we all know how crazy romance gets, right? And it just... it was working for us to not say anything. We didn't want to risk changing a good thing."

"Has he reacted at all to what's going on?" Rachel wondered, sitting next to Mercedes.

Mercedes snorted. "No. What would he react to? I've pretty much got jack squat for powers compared to a lot of you guys."

"That's not true," Rachel instantly said. As that left Mercedes unconvinced, she considered and added, "You did stop a bullet."

"So for half a second, I was awesome." Mercedes shrugged. "But I didn't really stop it. I just sent it toward Brittany. So... yeah. Don't worry about me. There's nothing to tip him off. No big dramatic Hail Marys to save the whole group on my part," she added and looked at Kurt again.

"We should at least go to the movies or something," Kurt suggested, prodding her arm gently. "Of course... that would involve telling him that you know that we know they know we know." She looked confused as he finished ticking off words on his fingers, and he flashed a smile at her. "You're the one who brought up Monica and Chandler."

"That could be fun," Mercedes said. "I... yeah. Me and Sam, we can go on a date with some of you guys. 'Cause we're dating. Yeah. I can break the news to him. Just give me a little bit to do it, okay?" They all nodded and she let out a sigh of relief.

"Cool," Finn said and leaned way over to study the others at the far side of the room. "So, you think we can hook up Quinn and Artie?"

Rachel patted his arm. "Let's not push our luck."

* * *

They launched their grand, well-planned offensive with dreams of spectacular glory and breathtaking rescues. After a week, Rachel was still dreaming. She rubbed the bridge of her nose as the latest report came in. "Noah, I think I misheard you."

"Nope," Puck said. He nodded at Tina. "It was just like what she said." 

Looking at Tina made the girl return a broad, amused smile, and Rachel just managed not to rub her nose again. "So you went on the patrol we discussed," she said to Puck.

"Yep."

"You found criminals engaged in... criminal activities."

"Well, that might be pushing things," Tina said, but Rachel chose to ignore her.

"And by the end of it, those criminals were gone and you—"

"Punched a cow," Puck said with no concern at all.

"I actually think it was a bull," Tina said.

Rachel's stricken expression made Puck want to defend himself. "We were helping," he said pointedly. "Some idiot kids thought that you could actually tip over cows! And instead they just pissed them off. They were going to get gored or something." He jerked his thumb at Tina. "Well, Tina figured out that she can drain life energy, not just electricity, so she calmed down one of the cows that way."

"I hope I didn't kill it," Tina said unhappily.

"Her weird psychic freakout powers don't seem to work on cow brains," Puck continued, "but at least they got the kids to run."

"I don't think they're really _psychic_ powers," Artie piped up. "It's like she uses energy to stimulate the instinctive parts of the brain, like she's touching them with a wire. All physical reactions, no weird ESP stuff. You know, I bet you could make someone feel good, too. That's all mixed up in the same brain chemistry." At their looks, he added, "I've started reading scientific journals."

"Make people feel good? That could get messy," Tina said with a smirk.

"And, long story short," Puck finished, "the cows were mad, we were there, and so I punched one."

"I still think it was a bull," Tina said.

Well. That conversation had left Rachel entirely exhausted. "I... guess that's a success?" she said helplessly, and pulled out her map to make a green X over a little town named Ashley. The map was up to a dozen marks, now. Some were green, where they'd successfully chased off a mugger or had frightened away someone getting a little too handsy. A couple were red, when they'd had to flee before doing any good.

Still, they weren't exactly making a name for themselves. Not if 'bull-punching' was Puck's current claim to fame.

"You really can't tip cows over?" Artie asked Puck, who shook his head.

"Nah. Way too heavy. The team tried freshman year." His eyebrows rose. "Hey, but I could, now. I made that cow roll."

"Bull," Tina corrected.

Things would start looking up, Rachel told herself. Things would start looking up.

* * *

"Say it again," Rachel said to Mike.

"I missed a catch, Dad," Mike said and adjusted his bag of frozen peas. "Some guys and I decided to run extra passes and the football got through my hands." Then he lowered the bag and Rachel winced at the sight of the dramatically dark bruising around his eye. "Does it really look that bad?"

"It looks pretty bad," she said, knowing she was nowhere near a good enough liar to pretend otherwise. Morose, he returned the bag over it and winced at the contact.

After patting Mike gently on his free hand, Rachel stole away to ask, "What happened?"

Quinn shook her head in irritation. Amazingly, it seemed to be directed at the circumstances rather than Rachel, or at how Finn had been the captain of that mission. "Well, we were about ninety percent sure that we actually stumbled on a drug deal." 

"A drug deal," Rachel repeated in disbelief. "Columbus has drug deals?" Hearing how stupid her words sounded, she said, "Sorry, of course it has drug deals, it's a big city. But you actually found one?"

"It certainly looked that way," Quinn said. The captains had decided to pull names from a hat, figuring that it would be good practice to be able to use whatever combination of powers they had on hand. But when Santana had refused to walk into the cow field full of manure while Puck and Tina tackled that issue, Rachel was worried that other groups would be similarly dysfunctional. Finn drawing Quinn's name was a nightmare in the making, they were all sure of it. 

But then, somehow, they'd put aside their differences and worked together. Honestly, she didn't know how they'd done it. "Was he armed?" Rachel asked with concern.

"A gun," Quinn said, nodding. But then she smirked, brushed her hair away from her face, and said, "Finn read that the crook didn't see us coming, and I was able to make that gun so cold that it burned his hand."

"Well done!" Rachel enthused, and after a bit of wariness Quinn accepted the compliment. "But then how did Mike...?"

"The guy bolted for his car when he saw a bunch of people in masks," Quinn grumbled. "We told Mike to let him go, but he was determined to fly after a car rocketing down the streets."

"Mike got a black eye from flying?" Rachel asked, confused.

"No. Mike got a black eye from missing a turn and smacking into a building." Quinn shook her head. "Someone needs to learn how to brake."

"Hey!" Brittany said with excitement, and both girls turned to look at her. "I'm flying!"

"We all do really seem to be settling comfortably into our powers, at least," Rachel said weakly. "Even if—"

Rachel and Quinn cringed at the heavy thump. Brittany slid down the wall, then shook her head to clear it.

"Braking does seem to be a problem," Quinn said dryly.

* * *

It wasn't just missions that caused trouble, either. Rachel had juggled crime prediction, dates with civilians, and field work, yet was just barely able to hold everything together when they assembled in her basement once more. They were all still _them_ , just superpowered, and New Directions had never been an easy ship to captain.

Puck sneezed so loudly that it echoed off the far corners of Rachel's basement. She and Kurt looked at the wall, did a double-take, and then wrinkled their noses in identical disgust. "Puck!" Kurt said. "Cover yourself when you sneeze!"

"What?" Puck asked and turned to follow their gazes. When he saw the tiny dent he'd left in the wall, like his nostril had fired a very small bullet, he started laughing. 

"That's disgusting, Noah," Rachel snapped and hurried to the bathroom. She grabbed a wad of toilet paper and the Lysol, then thrust it at him. "Clean up after yourself."

"It's just snot," he said as he swiped at the wall. "Do you know how much people smear on the desks at school?"

"I am so glad we're in the middle of summer vacation," Kurt muttered, but then frowned and worked through something. He went abruptly white and lunged forward to grab Puck's shirt. As Puck looked with amusement at where Kurt held him, Kurt demanded, "I cannot believe I'm asking this, but: since your powers appeared, have you had sex?"

"No," Puck grumbled. "Wanted to make sure I had good muscle control before I started, you know." He thrust his hips forward and impacted Kurt's, who yelped and skittered backward. Like he hadn't done anything, Puck blithely continued, "But I think I'm pretty much set."

"With your _conscious_ muscle control, yes," Kurt said delicately. "But, um, when you sneezed, you just...."

Puck frowned, considered the dent in the wall, touched his nose, and then looked down the length of his body. Though it took him a few seconds, he went nearly as pale as Kurt. "Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me."

Was Kurt seriously worried that when Puck... oh, no. Rachel didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Of all people, _Noah Puckerman_ might be condemned to celibacy if he didn't want to hurt his partner?

"I take it you've...." Kurt's hand jerked a couple of times.

Puck looked flatly at him. "Duh, twice a day."

"Well, that was more detail than I needed," Kurt said. "Did you, um...." He ran a hand across his face, steeled himself, and then asked in one breath, "Did you catch it or did it have the chance to fly free?"

"Always used Kleenex or a sock," Puck said. His frown deepened and he rounded on Rachel. "I need to use your bathroom."

"No!" Rachel squeaked, but he was already walking in and slamming the door shut behind him. She spun to face Kurt and slapped him on the shoulder. "Why! Why did you bring that up? Why did you have to think about him doing _that?_ "

"Well, I'm sorry my mind wandered and may have saved Lauren from an ER trip in the process," Kurt said. "In exchange I think you can deal with the knowledge that Puck is unzipping on the other side of that door."

But she didn't _want_ to deal. Glad that no one else had noticed their argument, Rachel hurried to the sound system and put on whatever album was already inside. Though some of the others looked annoyed at the sudden round of showtunes interrupting their conversations, they seemed to chalk it up to Rachel being Rachel and went back to what they'd been doing.

"I think I liked it better when the two of you didn't get along," Rachel sighed as she leaned against the sideboard next to Kurt and they waited for the results. At least the music masked anything floating through the door.

"No, you didn't."

"At this one moment, I do," she said. "Your mind shouldn't 'wander' like this! You have a boyfriend."

Kurt eyed her. "Oh, come on. This isn't about romance, this is _biology._ If you thought that...." His face twisted with mild distaste as he gestured off at nothing. "A girl could hurt someone with period... stuff, you'd bring it up."

"And how would a girl hurt someone with 'period stuff?'" Rachel asked.

"How should I know?" Kurt said. "I'm not required to know anything about it. At all. Ever. Thankfully."

"Oh, please. That sort of dismissive tone is the worst sort of behavior from a gay man, Kurt. My dads had to give me the talk when I hit puberty, you know. They bought me pads and tampons when I didn't know which I wanted to use. They still shop for them without complaining."

"And they are your dads, who are required to do that," Kurt fired back.

"We talked about getting a place together! Roommates are required, too!"

"Only if I get a discount on the rent," he sniffed.

"You can be insufferable, you realize."

Kurt rolled his eyes. "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot I was talking to the girl who thought I should throw away what I did on Pip Pip Hooray and write The Rachel Berry Story."

"I am far more interesting than someone named Pippa," Rachel said. 

Kurt's gasp didn't seem entirely for show. "Blasphemy."

"You can't use that word, you're an atheist."

"Which is why I...." Trailing off, Kurt saw that Puck had opened the door and walked back out to face them. "Um. How did it...?"

"I can't believe it," Puck said blankly. "This is crap."

_Oh dear._

"Maybe they sell... super-powered condoms at that supply store?" Kurt suggested. "Or, well, there are other ways. And, um. You look ready to cry. Please stop."

"I cleaned up your wall," Puck mumbled as he walked off. Though Kurt and Rachel tried to soothe his damaged ego and keep him there, Puck shrugged them off and slunk miserably to the stairs.

Rachel sighed, shook her head, and looked in the bathroom. Her mouth thinned. "He dented the wall again, Kurt."

"Would you have rather he dented Lauren?" Kurt asked.

"He could have dented a wall in _your_ house."

"Oh, like my dad would ever let Puck whip it out," Kurt snorted. "We are talking serious dislike coupled with serious overprotective issues with the whole 'boys are around' concept."

"You just had to say 'coupled,'" Rachel said and Kurt made another face at her.

"I'm sure he'll figure out some way to handle it," Kurt eventually said. "He's actually acting like a decent guy, now. He's not going to hurt her for his own gratification."

Or he would promise her that 'he'd pull out, baby,' Rachel thought darkly. That had gone so well with Quinn. It felt odd to have less faith in Puck than Kurt did, considering their mutual histories, but she supposed it was only natural for her to side more with the girl. "I just hope he realizes how serious a risk he could be taking if he pushes things." 

"He won't," Kurt said. When she glanced at him, Rachel saw that his gaze was as far-off as his voice. "Really. He won't."

"It's good to see everyone trusting each other so much," Rachel said after some hesitation.

After all, she'd just drawn Quinn for her next trip, and they had to have each other's back.

* * *

"You froze my hair, Quinn," Rachel said as she slammed the car door.

"It was smoldering."

"It was doing no such thing!"

"I saved you from going bald," Quinn said airily.

"The bottom inch of my hair snapped off!" Rachel shot back.

"Oops," Quinn said and dug for her keys. She glanced at Rachel again when she'd found them, and said in that silk-smooth way of hers, "I know you might not believe me, but you were too close to that fire." They'd been debating whether to try to help or to wait for the firefighters to arrive. "You really were smoldering."

Rachel frowned. She and Quinn had veered back and forth with how they behaved around each other, and she'd thought they were on the mend. Then Quinn had been outright cruel to her during the flight to Nationals, and had remained pointedly nasty for the first few days of the trip. Though she'd pulled back by the end, Rachel had no idea where they were with each other. The time spent as this new team hadn't clarified matters, and their powers had only raised the stakes.

"I suppose you can trust me or not," Quinn finally said.

"All right. I trust you," Rachel said, remembering Kurt's confidence in Puck.

"Good." Quinn just fought back a smile, and it only tugged at the edge of her lips. "And you've had a big soot smudge across your nose the entire drive back." But then she let her smile free, and it looked genuine. Rachel smiled back.

* * *

Weeks passed. They added more green Xs to the map than red, even as people juggled practices or work or family dinners. Uniforms began to reflect their individual tastes. Powers came when they were called upon. Every combination of members might not love each other, but they at least got along. When significant others were invited to movies or restaurants, they remained safely in the dark. Everything, Rachel thought as she watched Artie fiddle with a screwdriver, was completely under control.

"Oh, I just remembered something," Rachel abruptly said. "Ages ago, you said you wanted to tell me something about Matt?"

"Right!" Artie said, sitting up straighter. "Okay. It's really weird, and I've been thinking about it a bunch. But the thing is: I saw him. But he was older."

She waited for the rest of the story and frowned when it didn't come. "All right?"

Clearly frustrated, Artie gestured back and forth a few times as he struggled for words. "No, it looked exactly like him, if he were just a few years older! Or... or about ten years older. Somewhere in the middle."

"Did you ask his name?" Rachel asked. 

"No. Brittany and I just saw him standing outside the school, like he was looking at it." Seeing what Rachel was about to ask, Artie sighed and said, "It was the parking lot, so yes, he could have been waiting for someone. And yeah, the only other person who saw him was Brittany."

"Brittany?" Rachel repeated, because Artie was clearly very intent on this matter and wanted it solved. "I could ask her...?"

"Never mind," Artie grumbled. "I know she's not exactly the best witness." Well, Rachel had been going to dance around the Brittany issue, but he was right. After considering everything, Artie shook his head. "Gah. Sorry. This is just bugging me so much, and I don't even have a good reason for it. I've been working on something to... never mind. I just want to get this all solved."

"All right," Rachel said and decided to leave him alone. Whatever his reason for being so unsettled, Artie really didn't need to worry. Everything was all coming together. Why, then, did she get the distinct feeling that Artie worried that all of their carefully-arranged blocks might come falling down? From the sound of things, he wouldn't even be able to explain himself if asked.

But that didn't mean that his subconscious hadn't noticed something. They'd focused on not giving their parents anything to pick up on, or their love interests. A person could notice a bunch of things that didn't seem to make sense and then have it all come abruptly together. 

Rachel considered that as she watched Kurt comment on Puck's new outfit. "I told you," Puck said as he tugged at the short sleeves to his new jacket. "I wanted sleeveless."

"I tried that," Kurt said good-naturedly. "This still shows your arms. Oh, stop it. What you asked for gave you a vest, basically, and wearing it alone made you look like a big strapping leather daddy."

"Maybe I want that," Puck said with a frown, obviously trying to pass off his ignorance. Kurt didn't do a very good job of fighting back giggles, but Puck didn't seem to take offense.

Well, no wonder Artie was confused, Rachel thought as she moved on. There were a lot of unexplained little things here and there.

* * *

After a month of patrolling suburban parking lots and punching cows, Rachel felt that they deserved a bigger challenge. "Artie?" she asked hopefully. "Did you find anything yet?" She'd asked him to hunt down a real threat: some hint of a bank heist in the making, a shipment of laboratory materials that would be stolen, possibly a supervillain coming to visit distant relatives... but no. Whether it was his lingering distraction with maybe-Matt or a simple drought of superheroic possibilities in the great state of Ohio, they had yet to stumble upon their big break.

Artie shook his head. Disappointing, but hardly surprising.

Meeting in her basement had become a standard thing. It was a rare occasion that they had to meet somewhere else, and they'd settled in comfortably there with little fear of discovery. Her fathers had taken Rachel out to dinner and a movie the night before, but had left again that morning. It had been a busy summer. She was a little sad over it; by this time next year, she'd be planning to move out of the house and out of Ohio. Still, their jobs were important to the entire Berry family, and she couldn't complain.

While her dads were at the top of Rachel's mind, she sent a text to soothe any parental concerns they might have in their distant hotel room. _Kurt and I are watching movies. We can have wine with our pizza, right? ;)_ The expected good-natured _NO_ soon followed. Her fathers were made happy by knowing Rachel had a friend there in their absence, while Kurt's parents were having their overprotective embraces steadily loosened by supposed nights spent at Rachel's.

Without an obvious mission to research further, Artie's attention wandered. Plucking something from his array of half-built gadgets that he'd toted over that evening, Artie ran something new over Mike. Wary, Mike asked, "What are you doing? Are you going to zap my neck again?"

Frowning, Artie fiddled with something on the pieced-together device in his hand. "I'm not sure."

Finn looked up with concern. "If he says it's for bees, don't touch it."

That made Artie stifle a laugh behind his hand. "Pretty sure this isn't for bees. It either scans us for being mutants or scans us for... um...." He studied the device again. "It might be scanning us for excessive styling products. 'Cause, you know, they've got weird chemicals in them."

"Check it on Kurt," Mike and Finn instantly said. 

They called Kurt over, who walked there with clear unease about whatever Artie was pointing at him. "What's going on?"

"Stay still," Artie said as he fiddled with knobs. Rachel looked over his shoulder with curiosity, as did most of the group. "Stay still," he repeated as Kurt tried to move to see what he was holding. After a light flashed red, Artie turned off the device and said, "No."

"No _what?_ " Kurt asked. By that point he looked more than a little irritated.

"The first option is that no, you didn't use too much crap in your hair today," Finn said wryly, and poked a finger at the helmet-like pompadour Kurt was sporting. It sprang back into position when Kurt batted him away. 

"So it's gotta be saying no to the other option," Mercedes said, and Tina and Mike nodded solemnly at her.

"Hey," Kurt said. He looked more offended by the second. "I use exactly as much as is necessary for this style."

"So if he uses enough goop to set off option number one if you'd accidentally made that instead," Santana asked, ignoring Kurt, "what else could it have been scanning for?"

"I'm about ninety-nine percent positive I made it right, so: Kurt's not a mutant." Artie said proudly. "I knew I wanted to make a mutant scanner, and I that's what I did!" His voice quieted a bit as he added, "And it only took me three weeks."

"Oh," Kurt said. Then he brightened. "Oh!" He clapped his hands. "Hooray! Not that we don't recognize the injustice and are trying to fight it and blah blah blah whatever, I just really didn't want to grow a tail." Then he pointed at Tina. "Stop with the judging look, you didn't want one, either."

"I don't know," Mike said quietly as Artie began running the device over everyone and heard a steady stream of 'no.' "She had ideas for a tail. Fun ideas."

It took hearing the 'no' beep on her before Rachel realized the heart of the problem that Artie had been trying to solve.

Rachel knew Puck posed an unwitting risk, but not how he would fool Lauren on a long-term basis. Blaine didn't suspect anything about what Kurt was doing in secret, but he kept asking about Puck during mutual dates and Rachel hadn't the slightest clue why. They needed to tackle something bigger and more important, but she didn't know where to find it.

Even with Rachel's attempts to keep everything under control, questions kept piling up. And Artie had just asked one of the biggest ones.

"So if we're not mutants," Brittany asked, "and we don't think Mr. Schue did this, or Coach Beiste, or any barrels of radioactive waste...."

Santana finished her question. "Then what are we?"

No one had an answer.


	11. Saving Lives

"I can't tell you exactly where the information is coming from," Artie announced, "but there's going to be a major assault on Ohio State tonight."

Santana rushed to his computer and scanned the information he'd copied into a text file, and then rounded on him. "What do you mean you can't tell us? You're not Woodward and Bernstein. Stop protecting a source."

"I'm not protecting a source," Artie said with irritation as he turned his laptop back to face him. "I honestly don't know how I got into this board. I hacked a password without trying, and then it automatically booted me out after ten minutes."

"Oh," Santana said without apologizing and leaned in again to read the report again. Artie snorted.

There were more than a few posts, but they were short and mostly written at a fifth-grade level. Whoever the posters on that board were, they were indeed planning to attack the campus that evening. Their messages boasted about how they would strike fear into the heart of 'flyover country'—condescending jerks—and leave the entire state trembling in fear of what they might do next.

"At least it's during summer," Artie said, "so it won't be a full campus of students. That'd get pretty gruesome."

"Even so," Mercedes said. "There'll still be people around. It could be gruesomeish."

"And we should probably go and stand up to those invaders," Rachel said with a confident pop of her eyebrows, "so they never have a chance to hurt anyone. Shouldn't we?"

"Just to be clear," Kurt said and cleared his throat, "we're not just practicing to be safe with our powers, and we're not just talking about protecting the underclasses that no one else looks out for. We're discussing going out in total public to protect a major landmark from an open assault, when the police would completely swarm it if we just left well enough alone."

"Yeah, and would the police come before or after these guys slaughter a bunch of summer students on their way to whatever they're aiming for?" Santana asked. Thanks to weeks of a Lima-only curfew, Kurt had missed many training missions in favor of costume alterations, and had only joined them again for the last week and a half. On one hand, he obviously needed to practice less than most. On the other, it was sort of weirdly... gratifying to help people. Sure, sometimes those people were idiots and Santana laughed when they tripped as they fled to safety, but it was still better to see them get away than get hurt. Kurt hadn't experienced much of that. Which meant that he might go back into little whiny bitch mode when they delved deeper into superheroics. And that meant that Santana Lopez might have to kick some ass.

"I didn't say no," Kurt said with a bare hint of a smile, which Santana felt herself returning. "I just wanted to clarify."

Although the majority seemed ready to rumble, Finn looked near death again. As the group worked, he stayed slumped at the far end of a couch and gave the impression that anyone who came near would risk having their brain put through a psychic blender. Kurt risked it anyway after he'd finished participating in the collective pep talk; he probably felt guilty over having another imaginary Captain Kirk tryst inside Finn's head. "Whatever you read from me last night, I'm sorry."

Mournful brown eyes stared at him. 

"I only remember one dream," Kurt began. After a pause, he slowly continued, "And... apparently a picnic in Central Park with a unicorn and Hillary Clinton traumatized you deeply." Kurt frowned. "What on earth did I _eat_ that night? Even for dream logic, that doesn't make sense. A unicorn would never have pastrami on rye."

"It wasn't a dream from your room," Finn mumbled. "And it wasn't a... dream."

"Oh," Kurt said, blinking. Shock ran suddenly through him and in a mournful voice he repeated, _"Oh."_

Finn let out a tiny, pained cry and held a throw pillow over his face until Kurt pried it away.

Santana considered the other people in that house and burst out laughing. Both glared at her, but she was unrepentant. "Was there ass-slapping?" she giggled. "Is your mom an ass-slapper, Finn?"

As Kurt gagged, Finn reared up and ordered, "Shut your mouth, Lopez." His eyes flared purple, just for a second, and Santana skittered backwards before he managed to do whatever creepy psychic thing he'd been planning. Well, it was good to know that insulting his family might awaken something besides that totally vanilla psychic telephone operator service.

"I suppose that's another night of New York dreams, then," Kurt muttered to change the subject. "Again. Like I've been having for nearly a month straight."

She hadn't said much after the initial talk on the topic, but New York had been showing up more frequently for Santana as well. Now that Artie had raised the question of just what they might be, Santana was concerned that someone in New York had done something to them. It would explain their powers showing up right after Nationals, and could explain the dreams about the city that she'd heard mentioned across the entire choir. Some just had a few. Others, like her and Kurt, were practically living there.

But—deli-shopping unicorns aside—the dreams were usually so _boring_. They weren't about superheroics in Times Square or getting the key to the city. Hers were about waiting at intersections in some neighborhood that she somehow knew was called Sunset Park, or shopping at corner stores.

(Bodegas, she corrected herself.)

"Where's the 96th Street Station?" Finn asked and rubbed the heel of his hands against his eyes. He must have pulled back before things got too bad in that bedroom, Santana decided, or he'd be catatonic. "I've walked there like ten times to go... to go somewhere."

"On 96th Street?" Santana drawled and got a flat look in return. She didn't mention that her Brooklyn dreams kept focusing around the 45th Street Station. Her boring, _mundane_ dreams about taking that subway station for a morning commute when she was tired and didn't want to go to school.

"Upper West Side," Kurt told Finn, frowning. "Wait, but that's where—"

"Hello!" Rachel said, upstairs but so loudly that it carried down to the basement. "Okay, hi, so you're surprising us and want to see everyone! I'll just go let them know that you're here!" She ran down the stairs and just had time to hiss, "Lauren is about to walk in, look normal!"

"Well well," said Lauren when she'd followed Rachel down the stairs and made a long, slow survey of the eleven people in her basement. "Guess you've been forgetting some people, huh?"

Puck froze for a second, but then slipped into his charisma like pulling on a mask. "Baby, I can explain."

"So can I," she said with a smirk. "See, Puck and I were making out on his bed all yesterday," Lauren said. "We were ready to get down to business, but he left me there when he had a craving for a chili dog."

"7-Eleven was having a special," Puck said as everyone eyed him. (Except for Kurt and Rachel, who seemed sympathetic; weird.)

"Anyway, I started digging through his closet because I wanted to throw out a shirt," Lauren continued. Puck looked offended. "What? I told you that I hate the one with the deer antlers. I am not down for rolling around with dead Bambi."

"But I love that shirt," Puck said. Santana had a terrible idea of where Lauren's story was going. Of fucking course this girl— _this_ girl— was going to cause trouble and ruin all their plans.

"See, Sam texted me a few days ago to ask if I knew what was up with you guys hardly being around. At all. Ever." Lauren folded her arms across her chest and looked unimpressed as she continued, "Then he brought in some scrawny guy who laminated his head."

"Blaine is not scrawny," Kurt snapped. Santana barely fought back her laughter, as Kurt apparently didn't realize he'd decided that the description _must_ apply to Dapper Do-Right.

Lauren ignored him. "We were trying to figure out if you guys were hiding something. And then? I did _not_ find Puck's antler shirt." Lauren smiled and Santana's stomach dropped another foot or two toward the ground. "But I did find his superhero costume and mask."

Everyone turned back to Puck. He shrank under their attention. "How was I supposed to know she'd look in there?"

Lauren could not look more smug if she tried, and Santana knew about how smug it was possible to look. "Guys? Come on in, I did my big intro." A big pair of lips and an awful head of hair came to flank her on either side. "Mind filling us in on _everything_ we've missed?"

Quinn stormed up to Puck and smacked him across the shoulders a few times. "Ow!" he said and held her off. "Quit it!"

"Is she right?" Sam asked, nearly vibrating with excitement. "Are you guys superheroes? What can you do?"

Blaine was far more reserved. His brow was furrowed and his shoulders tense as he slowly approached Kurt and asked, "Is this really true? I mean... there has to be some other explanation for what she found, and why you've been gone so much. Because you would have told me, right? You would have told me something this big?" But of course Kurt could only fumble for an answer that wasn't there, and Blaine looked sad and hurt at the confirmation that he'd been lied to.

"So you are superheroes," Lauren deduced. "This kind of kicks ass." She pointed at Puck, who'd managed to disengage himself from Quinn, and said, "But you should have told us. Jerk. Here I was getting sick of being blown off, and... okay, you still don't ever get to blow me off, but I would have understood if you were saving people."

Having managed to move past his parental trauma, Finn stepped into the center of the discussion and put his telepathic skills to better use. "I know you guys are upset," he said calmly, as it was apparently past the point where they could lie about what was going on. "Well, Sam wants to train to be an unpowered superhero like Batman, but still, there's some tension."

"How did you know that?" Sam asked, but the answer came to him. "You really do have superpowers, because Finn's a telepath and he just read my mind. I am so in. Can I get a costume?" he asked. A sudden grin lit up his face. "Oh, oh. I know! I could have a leather duster like Neo."

The room was torn between those worried that they'd be reported to the authorities and those trying to appease the trio of trouble-making newcomers. Puck picked up Lauren, who looked more than a little intrigued at his powers, and Sam actually cackled as he slapped his hands against Mercedes' shield and watched it flare up each time. Blaine, though... he tugged Kurt off to the side for what would clearly be a serious discussion. That one looked the most interesting by far, and so it was what Santana eavesdropped on.

"I didn't believe it when Sam messaged me on Facebook," Blaine said quietly. "Or maybe... maybe Puck had a reason to have those clothes, but you wouldn't be the same way. You would have told me. We'd just said 'I love you,' this was just starting... you wouldn't lie to me."

Kurt flinched, and that was all he seemed to need for an answer.

"And then I remembered how hurt you'd gotten in Columbus," Blaine continued. Though he had to keep stopping to swallow or take a deep breath, his voice was steady when he did speak. "How you just happened to have found the violence going on and you just happened to wind up in the middle of it. How you just _happened_ to have stumbled across some mutants who needed help, and seemed to think that it was really, really wrong that they were getting targeted. Like it was something that should be fixed."

"I didn't want you to be Gwen Stacy," Kurt said desperately. "Okay?" He apparently seemed to expect Blaine to understand that reference, and when he only got a blank expression, Kurt continued, "When the bad guys figure out who knows the person behind a mask... those people can get hurt. If you didn't know, no one could ever target you."

"How long?" 

"I'm sorry I've been lying to you, okay?" Kurt pleaded.

"I'm not asking about the lying," Blaine said. "How long have you been putting yourself at risk by playing with these powers? Where have you been going? What have you gone up against? It's not fair to leave someone who cares about you in the dark like this, Kurt. It's not about... it's not just about the lying. It's that I didn't even know you were putting yourself in real danger. That's never all right."

"Lauren and Sam seem to be taking it better," Kurt muttered, nodding toward the two.

"Yes, well," Blaine said with an almost eerie calm, "they haven't gone through thinking that the person they care most about in the world just barely escaped dying, have they? It's a little more real to me." The two stayed quiet for a while. It felt like Blaine was collecting himself after revealing more than he'd meant to, and Kurt was feeling his guilt seep down through every pore. Only after they'd wallowed did Blaine smile and ask, "So... what can you do?"

Tension poured off Kurt, and he nearly giggled as he clasped Blaine's hands and said, "Okay, focus on how you can feel me. Got it?" When Blaine nodded, Kurt vanished from sight. Blaine jerked back in surprise and then started feeling around for his invisible boyfriend.

"You were supposed to hold on," Kurt said chidingly as he came back into view. Now he was doing the splits as totally as Brittany could manage. With an impish smile, he caught the leg behind him and brought that foot up to touch the back of his head. "I'm a ninja," he said casually as he sat like he wasn't contorted far past what should be comfortable for anyone.

There was something _very_ interested in Blaine's expression as he swallowed a few times and said, "Oh." The word had to be at least half an octave lower than normal.

"Show-off," Mercedes laughed, and the two boys turned to see some of the room watching. Finn winced at how Kurt was sitting, Mike and Brittany seemed impressed, and Puck... as Lauren groped his arms, Puck simply _stared_.

Kurt gave them all a perfect royal wave, and then eeped in surprise as Blaine looked away from the others with a glower, reared forward, and kissed him thoroughly. He slid into a more convenient position with feline grace, and for a moment seemed to forget where he was and that they had an audience. Soon Kurt blushed and extracted himself from the kiss. "Shut up," he said good-naturedly to the people catcalling their display.

God. These were some of the people who'd made his life hell, and they didn't care at all about what they'd just watched.

She'd been eavesdropping to entertain herself, Santana thought sadly as she met Brittany's eyes. She hadn't wanted another helping of guilt, of judgment, of the feeling that she just had to... screw this. Santana pulled herself together with almost physical effort and said to the two XY-chromosome attention whores, "So anyway, Richie Rich—" They looked confused and she clarified, "His hair is vacuum-sealed, figure it out." Now that she had Blaine's attention, she continued, "I just thought you should know that we're going to drive to Columbus to kick some ass."

"You're going back there?" Blaine asked, his good mood instantly gone.

"It sounds like people could be in a lot of danger," Kurt pleaded. "And who else is going to handle it? I'm _so_ much better than I used to be with all of this, I promise. I know what I did wrong last time. I won't do it again." He saw Blaine about to protest and said, "Please? I promise I'll stay safe. No more nosebleeds for Kurt Hummel tonight. We might be able to save people from _dying_ to some scumbags who think they should be allowed to hurt anyone they want, Blaine," he added for a trump card, and Blaine's shoulders slumped.

"We're going with you," Blaine eventually said. He raised his voice and reiterated, "We can't stop you from going, but the three of us are going with you."

"Unacceptable," Rachel instantly said and Sam and Lauren's faces fell. "They're civilians! They're a security risk!"

"They could stay in my van," Artie offered. Rachel only looked more annoyed. He saw that and said to her, "Do you really think, between the three of them, that they wouldn't tell someone?"

"We'd totally tell someone if you didn't take us," Sam said breathlessly, although he didn't really seem to mean it. Someone was clearly just high on the idea of being around superheroes. "Yeah, totally. You should bring us with you."

Everyone shared a wary look. "Okay," Rachel relented. "The three of you can come with us. But you have to follow orders."

* * *

Rachel knew she was pushing her luck. After all, she thought as the team slid through the night to converge around Artie's van, it was hard enough to get everyone to behave. Bringing in civilians—civilians!—was just going to complicate matters. Plus, Blaine had been fascinated by how very tight Kurt's leather outfit was and how many straps had been included as weapon holders. His mind wandering meant _Kurt's_ mind had wandered, and she was almost positive that he hadn't listened to her during the drive there.

"I think we should split up," Rachel said when she considered the chatty people around her. They'd had more success with smaller teams than during their embarrassing debut in the city. "We know they're coming to campus, but not where. Envision, you can bring us together once we've identified our target."

Artie nodded and began to say something, but Sam cut him off to enthuse, "You just called him by his code name. That is so cool."

After a pointed throat clearing, Rachel inclined her head toward the van. "Sam, Blaine, Lauren, you will be staying here. Inside the van. The entire time. That was the deal." Although they were clearly filled with varied mixtures of fear and excitement, they nodded. Perhaps she should have coddled them a little more; a bomb had just dropped on them and they'd scrambled to get any alibi for a trip to Columbus. But the team didn't know who was threatening the university, where they'd be, or when they'd get there. It was important to hurry.

"Wildfire," Rachel said. "Will you lead a team?"

Santana smiled broadly. Now that they each had their own little realm, she was far easier to get along with. "I suppose."

Rachel gave momentary thought to trying to balance powers, but the teams were naturally splitting apart into groups of who most liked spending time together. If Santana wanted Brittany and Quinn with her, why force things? She was more than happy with Finn, Kurt, and Mercedes. 

"I'll go with them," Puck said as he began to move toward Rachel's group. That wasn't surprising, either; Finn and Rachel were there, after all. 

"Nah, come with us," Santana said after a quick glance around the group. "Tina should be sentry for the van, since she can send anyone running away from the normals. And that's going to mean that—"

"Then I should stay with her and help!" Mike said. The couple beamed at each other a bit too brightly, and Rachel decided to pick her battles and moved on. Hopefully they'd remember to come up for air every now and then.

"What's your codename, anyway?" Santana asked Tina. 

"Dread," Tina said. She seemed to revel in the word, rolling it around her mouth like a fine wine.

"Like the judge," Puck said. "Nice. But I really want to go—"

Blaine spoke abruptly up. "You should go with Wildfire's team, _Champion._ "

"Who asked you?" Puck snorted.

He put his hand on Kurt's shoulder, trailed down his arm, and interlaced their fingers. "It'll balance the numbers," Blaine said smoothly. "And your captain gave you an order." Kurt looked down at their hands, where Blaine was squeezing tightly, and seemed both pleased and confused.

"Fine," Puck said after a short pause, and kissed Lauren. "For good luck," he said with a wink. "Not that I'll need it. Come on, Wildfire. Lead us, uh, wherever."

Santana waved to everyone, and then her group set off running. Rachel checked the campus map she'd printed out and pointed in the other direction. "Everyone, let's go. Envision, Swift, and Dread, keep them all safe, and don't let yourselves be identified. Talk to you guys later, bye!" They waved, and then set off at a brisk jog in search of whoever might be planning an attack on the city. Surely it wouldn't be too dangerous, she thought as they slipped between shadows and avoided late-night students. Who would have any interest in _Ohio?_

* * *

After nearly an hour, Artie's warning proved true. Santana had started to doubt him. "Finally!" she said as she saw two spandex-clad, refrigerator-sized men round a corner and look startled at the presence of costumed heroes. "We were wondering when you guys would show up." Her communicator crackled and Santana turned to it. "Yep, we've got a sighting. Two very large, probably dumb guys."

"Hey," one said, offended.

Artie spoke up. "Good. The other team just encountered two more. Sounds like they split up to go looking."

"Thunderball," asked the paler man, "did you know there were do-gooders here?"

"No," Thunderball sighed. "I expected this to be a simple job."

Santana raised an eyebrow at how he held a large metal sphere on a chain. With his current stance, it rested neatly between his legs. "You're seriously 'Thunderball?' On purpose? Did we wander into a low-budget porno?"

Thunderball glared at her. "Shut it, girl."

"Thunderball," Puck repeated with amazement.

"I was going to complain about our outfits being boring," Brittany said as she looked over his green and gold spandex suit, "but I guess I'm just glad that we don't look like a 7-Up bottle."

"Wrecker," Thunderball said grimly, "let's take these children out of the way." Santana got the distinct impression that he did not appreciate being compared to delicious lemon-lime soda. 

His companion nodded and lifted a large crowbar above his head. "Sounds good to me." Both pieces of metal started whipping in circles. Perhaps they should find that intimidating, but Santana couldn't get over how those _big scary weapons_ were a crowbar and a ball on a chain, and how their group were super-strong elemental wielders of chaos.

"Thunderball," Quinn repeated. It sounded like her giggles had been building for a while, and although she tried to tamp them down, she couldn't keep her shoulders from shaking.

"Seriously," Brittany said. "That's so much worse than sounding like a deodorant."

That was when Wrecker launched his crowbar. If Quinn hadn't shrieked and thrown up an instinctive shield of ice to deflect it into a wall, the flying metal bar would have sliced her neatly in half.

"You're not stopping us from taking home that prize," Thunderball said grimly.

* * *

"What 'prize?'" Finn repeated blankly. Rachel narrowed her eyes at their two foes and tried to think of what Columbus could possibly hold for the semi-famous villain team known as the Wrecking Crew. They weren't anything like top-league players, as their typical cycle was breaking out, getting slapped down, and returning to jail, but they'd gone up against some of the best. If they were all the way out in Ohio, it was because they thought there was something to help them match up to that top tier.

"Thunderball promised us a prize!" said a man in a ridiculous yellow suit studded with rivets. From her research, Rachel knew he was called Bulldozer.

"Yes, you just said that," Kurt said with a dramatic roll of his eyes. "We're asking what the prize _is._ " Behind him, Mercedes quietly repeated, "Thunderball?"

"We don't know!" said Piledriver, who looked like someone had tried to make a Captain America costume entirely out of cut-up t-shirts to wear to a comic book convention. "But something is going on in Columbus, and we're going to get it!"

"Anthem," Mercedes said dryly as they studied their two opponents, "you get the feeling that we're not facing the brightest stars in the sky, here?"

"I am getting that impression," Rachel said. She was getting that impression very, very strongly.

* * *

"We should be calling the police," Blaine said seriously as he listened to the feed over Artie's communication system.

"Why?" Sam asked. His expression was far more engaged with each word over the speakers. Blaine seemed to have decided that the night would be nothing but terrible because of how Kurt had kinda-sorta almost died that one time. (It wasn't like he _had_ died.) Sam, though, had told them that the Wrecking Crew invariably lost and sounded excited to see how it would happen this time. "When they see the special effects, they'll come!"

Blaine stared at him for a beat before he managed to say in a strangled voice, "These are not 'special effects.' This is very real fighting happening with the people we care about, who are in danger!"

"Why don't you have a video feed on these things?" Lauren asked Artie impatiently.

"I'm sorry my amazing technological creations aren't up to your standards," Artie replied.

"I hate sarcasm," Lauren said.

Artie eyed her sidelong. "You're sarcastic all the time."

"I mean that I hate bad sarcasm."

Artie snorted and ignored her. Movement outside his windshield reminded him to check on Mike and Tina. They still seemed bored and on the verge of turning their attention to each other, which was probably a good sign.

Yeah, he decided as he tried to listen to what was going on and make sense of it all. Version two of these things would definitely have a video feed.

* * *

"Shit!" Wrecker said as he went skidding across the street and picked himself up at the end of his run. "That hurt!"

Santana flashed a grin at Puck, who cracked his knuckles and looked more than a bit proud of himself. Even if his blows weren't putting these guys down for good, they still smarted, and he clearly enjoyed being able to cut loose on people who could take his blows full-force.

Thunderball was still busy with Quinn, who'd figured out how to handle him on her own. Considering they'd only been doing this for a month, they were awesome. There had indeed been students on campus for summer night classes, as well as locals strolling across the school grounds. They could have easily been nothing more than bloody smears. Instead, their team corralled the duo until the crowds had screamed their way off into the distance, and only then laid down the real pain.

They were going to kick so much ass when they turned pro at this.

"You look hot right now," Brittany told Santana as she glanced away from the attacks she was lobbing.

Santana instinctively looked around to see if anyone had heard. It wasn't unusual for Brittany to say that to her, but doing it so openly was a risk. People could make assumptions, and making assumptions could drive them to look deeper, to raise questions that she didn't want to answer...

But, Santana realized a second later, who would they ask? This wasn't Brittany Pierce, this was Haywire. She wasn't saying it to Santana Lopez, but to Wildfire. 

After a quick survey to make sure that neither Puck nor Quinn was paying attention, Santana said warmly back, "So do you. So freaking much." Her nerves still flared, but that brilliant, thankful smile Brittany gave her made them all go away. She barely had to think about lobbing a fireball at Wrecker, and his screams were like distant music to a sudden romantic soundtrack.

Wrecker threw Puck across the road to give himself some breathing room, patted down the flames, and fired off several creative swears that even Santana didn't know. _Neat,_ she thought as she mentally recorded them. _Future ammo._ "Where the fuck is this lab?" he asked desperately, looking more than a little battered and singed. "We just need that lab, and then we'll kick all your brats' asses!"

"Lab?" Santana and Brittany asked in perfect stereo. What sort of lab would they have at Ohio State that would earn so much attention? It wasn't like they were making their own Hulks or super soldiers just down the street from where the Buckeyes trained. Probably.

"We looked it up!" Wrecker said as he and Puck started wrestling in the street to gain an advantage. Both tried to plant their feet to become the immovable object, and asphalt folded. "And we found it: they put people on a table and zap them with electricity!"

* * *

Artie had never facepalmed quite so thoroughly in his life. He sighed, turned up the volume on his shoulder, and said, "I've been in that lab."

"Wait, who was that?" Artie heard a voice—he thought it was Wrecker—asking the question through Santana's communicator.

"I'm... uh, Envision," Artie said, catching himself just in time. "What do you think is happening in there?"

"We knew it!" Wrecker said proudly. "He's a member of this new superhero team, and he went through those experiments with electricity. I'm sure he's a new Thor in the making, or—"

"Guy, shut _up_ ," Artie repeated until their foe calmed down and let him talk. "These powers came from somewhere totally different. That lab is a treatment for spinal injuries and paralysis. It's the same thing that a university already did in Kentucky."

"Look, we got intel saying that there was something cool in Ohio and it's gotta be this!"

"No, it's not," Artie insisted. "They use electrodes to apply low-voltage impulses to the spinal column. It's pretty boring."

"Nuh uh," said Wrecker.

"Yuh huh," Artie fired back. "I was there! I saw an aquarium and boring medical journals in their waiting room and everything!" He was vaguely aware of the others clustering around him to listen in on the conversation; even Mike and Tina had popped back into the van.

"You've got to be kidding me," Wrecker said. "It's seriously got nothing to do with superpowers? Thunderball promised us more powers. Now what do we do?"

"Head to jail," Santana said. "Duh."

"Don't provoke him!" Blaine said, grabbing at Artie's shoulder. "You'd almost just talked him down and—" When the sound of heavy impacts echoed, he winced and pulled away. "Well. So much for avoiding tearing up the city any more."

"You don't want to _talk_ a bad guy down!" Sam said excitedly. "You want to throw him into the road and make a big crater! And then hit him with lasers or something!"

Lauren nodded. "Yeah, that sounds more fun."

After an annoyed noise at the roof of the van, Blaine frowned. "Wait. Is the other team being quiet or did you lose that feed?"

That was an excellent question, Artie thought as he pulled his communicator off his shoulder and studied it. "Well, I thought we were listening to everyone, but... oh. Oops, yeah, I set this wrong," he said. Sticking his tongue out, he fiddled with a wire and proudly slapped his invention back on his shoulder. "There. Now we can hear what's going on with Rachel's team."

They did.

Rachel's scream was piercing.

* * *

They had not planned this well, Rachel thought as she flung herself out of the way of a flying streetlight. She turned to face Piledriver as he stomped with a motorcycle held above his head, then took a deep breath. If she wanted to live, she had to pick a song with soaring notes and a tremendous climax. One came to mind from one of the biggest divas in the world and Rachel grabbed for it. She sang each word perfectly, and light and sound poured from her.

Of course, when her notes exploded against their enemy, they did so with physical force. It hadn't taken long to discover that the duo was immune to all but the strongest physical attacks.

So much for that, then.

As Rachel dove back to safety, Kurt stared at her from where he was cowering under a thrown car. "You seriously just sang 'I Surrender' in the middle of a fight?!"

"I've tested musicians!" Rachel yelled back as she dodged a few stray bricks that fell from the listing wall above her. "Celine is one of the most effective!"

"So sing 'The Power of Love!' 'I Drive All Night!'" His glare sharpened. "Don't sing about _surrendering!_ "

Oh, whatever. Like he was any more use in this fight.

_Finn!_ Rachel thought, hoping he could hear her. She didn't know where he and Mercedes had vanished to and hoped he was safe inside her shields. _Please say you can do mental bolts!_ Many telepaths could directly attack their enemies' minds. It seemed at least possible that Finn might be able to do the same, and right now he was their only hope for launching a non-physical attack against their enemies.

It had been all too easy to stick Santana, Quinn, and Brittany together. If only they'd mixed things up a little more, Rachel thought as she cringed further into the shadows upon seeing Bulldozer walk around the corner.

"Couldn't find 'em," he told Piledriver. "Where're your two?"

Rachel nearly squeaked when a hand grabbed her arm, and then realized Kurt had turned invisible and scurried across the space between them. The blur of her nose vanished from her vision as he illusioned her, too. "Stay still," he whispered. "I'm pretty tired, but I can keep this up so long as we're touching and we don't move."

It was no wonder that he was tired. When they'd realized how much they'd bitten off by facing these two, Kurt was the one who felt most comfortable with his powers and so who assumed the mantle of leading the first strike. He'd pulled out a sword he'd found at a pawn shop and rushed them, only to spend the next minutes trying desperately to get away. A single hit from them would leave him broken, if not dead, and it was all the three of them could do to help get him to safety. Now he was exhausted, drained, and unable to move without giving away their cover.

And unfortunately for them, they were sitting under a brick wall that was about to topple.

_Finn,_ Rachel tried again. Without her powers of absolute focus, she wouldn't have been able to manage sending those thoughts through her fear. _Please, please be okay._

_I'm here,_ she heard faintly. It was difficult to hold back tears. 

"I just heard Finn," she whispered and felt Kurt squeeze her in relief.

_Stay there. They knocked over a building and Mercedes kept us safe with her shield, but it's taken her a while to figure out how to flex it in and out. She just slid the concrete off. We're on our way._

"They're coming," Rachel whispered. If they could hold on until they were inside Mercedes' shields... if they could hold on until the others joined them....

Another brick toppled from the leaning wall. It exploded into shards when it landed and pelted them. After they'd finished cringing, Kurt laughed weakly, "Well, I did design these costumes to hold back shrapnel." They stayed quiet as their two enemies continued stomping around, calling for them, but eventually Kurt spoke back up. "That wall's about to come down."

"I know," Rachel said. She'd been staring at it. They wouldn't live through those thousands of bricks landing on them.

"Come out and play, kids!" Bulldozer shouted and hefted a moped plastered in Buckeyes stickers. "It's been fun seeing what the minor leagues send out for a warmup!" He snorted when they stayed still, and then tossed it over his shoulder like a child bored with a doll.

It smacked right into the wall. A few more bricks fell, and then the entire side of the building began to slide free.

"Run!" Kurt hissed at her and they bolted from their 'cover' of a newspaper dispenser. His illusion fell away at the first steps and both men pointed at them and laughed. "Run!" he said more loudly as he grabbed her hand. That didn't help her, but it did mean that he was forcing himself not to leave her—and her shorter legs—behind.

"Hey, Piledriver!" shouted Bulldozer, and Rachel heard the groaning of another car being lifted. "Fifty points if you get them in one hit!"

Tiny, desperate gasps tore out of Rachel as they ran for their lives. She was going to die. Kurt was going to die. They were both going to die in homemade superhero costumes and their parents were going to be _so mad_ that they'd been lying all this time. She heard the wrenching metal-on-metal sound of the windup, and then... the pitch.

A shadow slid toward them in the long fingers of the streetlights. In a second, she knew that they wouldn't be able to dodge. Kurt used that time to wrap himself around her. That meant they weren't running, but that hardly mattered by that point. Nor did his attempt to shield her. They were both dead.

When she heard the creaking of metal again, Rachel opened her eyes and fully expected to see the afterlife. Instead, she saw the underside of something _very large_ hanging not two feet above her head. In the darkness she could make out a faint purple glow around it. "What?" she managed to ask. Kurt stared at the car with similar confusion. In unison, they both looked for whoever might have saved them. Maybe Artie invented something, or maybe Mercedes had just become _far_ more adept at manipulating shields....

Finn stood thirty feet down the road, panting. A similar purple glow ebbed and swelled around his forehead.

Not mental bolts, Rachel realized with a sudden wave of relief. Telekinesis. He did have some other power lurking back there, and the sight of them about to die had forced it to the surface.

"Oh god," Kurt said after staring at Finn and then looking up again at the underside of the car. "We're under a Suburban, _move_ ," he shouted and threw her to the side. She rolled across the pavement, bruising herself on rubble, and was almost too pained to see Kurt leaping after her and suffering the same fate. As soon as they were clear, the massive vehicle crashed to the ground. Glass exploded from the windows as they shattered. A few stray pieces tinkled to the asphalt around them.

"Run!" Kurt shouted again. His voice was so strained that he had to be fueled by pure, unfiltered adrenaline. He grabbed at her again and Rachel forced herself up as she saw their enemies approach. Though they made it safely to Finn, he collapsed against Kurt as soon as they were near. Blood had started to stream from Finn's nose.

"It was too heavy," Kurt muttered as he awkwardly shuffled Finn down the street. "It was too heavy for him, he is going to be _out_ —hurry!" he yelled as Mercedes rounded the corner. Finn must have run at full speed toward them, which had saved their lives but left her behind. She was still running as fast as she could, though, and her shields flared as soon as she joined them.

Another car rebounded a second later. Rachel, Kurt, and Mercedes all shrieked and crouched. Finn slumped to the pavement and they hurriedly gathered him back into her shields.

"How long can you keep these up?" Rachel asked as Piledriver picked up a brick, threw it, and chuckled as it shattered against the wall of energy.

"Long enough, I hope," Mercedes said. Her hands were glowing again. They still had no idea what that glow did, but she'd apparently decided to let it build to its conclusion. After all, Rachel thought grimly as the two men picked up benches and started walking toward them, it wasn't like things could get much worse.

* * *

"Stop it!" Wrecker shouted pitifully. "It hurts!" Brittany sat on him and plucked another chaos-made feather from his head. Santana smirked.

Once they'd figured out what to do, these boys were almost too easy. They were both big, tough, and strong, but brought very little else to the table. Considering they had their own thick-headed tank on staff, it was a simple matter to send in Puck for a distraction and then stand back and set off fireworks.

After Puck had tired that big goon out, Brittany managed to call chaos spheres on command for the first time ever. They didn't arrive every time, but more often than not she'd flung her hand forward and a ball of pure improbability had flown from it. That big hunk of muscle had actually squeaked in surprise when his crowbar dissolved into rust in his hand. Another bubble later, he fell flat on his face when his boot ties were suddenly and implausibly knotted together.

Puck looked up, bored, from where he was pinning Wrecker's arms behind his back. Once he'd gotten the advantage he'd held onto it securely. He looked nearly ready to yawn as he asked, "Should you be helping her?"

Glancing at Quinn showed a girl in total command of her fight, so no, Santana didn't need to help. First she'd made the road below Thunderball slick with ice, and attempting to swing his weapon had left him flat on his ass. Then she laid down another layer of ice directly on top of him, and another when he punched through it. Though her attacks and his escapes had been an even match for a long time, eventually he succumbed to the cold. 

A crowd had gathered at the far end of the street: far enough away to be safe, but close enough to stare in wonder at the new superheroes who'd just made a spectacular debut on the streets of Columbus. "Hello!" Santana called merrily toward them. Oh hell, she thought, why not ham it up a little now that they finally had the chance? Her hip cocked to one side and her hand fluttered a greeting. "Wildfire, at your service! My friends and I just thought we'd pay you a visit and stop—"

"—talking and come with me," Mike finished as he bolted from nowhere and grabbed her wrists.

"Excuse me, I was handling our PR," Santana said as she yanked her hands free. 

"And the other team is about to start _dying_ ," he said harshly. "Move."

"What?" Santana said. That didn't sound right. "But these guys were pushovers."

"Who can throw off physical strikes!" Mike said insistently and the repercussions hit Santana instantly. They'd divided themselves in the worst way possible.

Puck looked up from where he held Wrecker. His eyes widened, and then he punched his foe hard enough in the back of the head that any physical resistance did little good. Eyes rolling back, Wrecker collapsed flat against the sidewalk. Then Puck bolted up and took off running before Santana could stop him.

"Shit," she said. Unlike Puck, she recognized that they didn't know where to go. "Swift, do you know where they are?" Sirens drove up behind them, but she couldn't run away like their last trip to the city. Not with villains in the street, a whole crowd for an audience, and a need to go save their friends. "Uh," Santana said as she turned to face the police. "Hello, brave officers." Fuck! She was talking like Rachel. Was that how superheroes were supposed to sound? "We've prepared these villains for you, and now we just need to, um. Go kick their friends' asses."

The policemen stared at her, probably because they'd never thought that their force would have to deal with this. That call across their radio had must have taken them by surprise.

Quinn cleared her throat and asked, "Can you handle these men and free us to protect the city from their companions?" She poured more of her powers on top of Thunderball until he was inside a solid lump of ice. Faced with them and the police, he didn't do anything but shiver.

That phrasing seemed to get through; apparently superheroes really were supposed to talk like that. (Or at least, a bunch of clueless Columbus Police Department officers thought they were.) The young officer in front of Santana stammered, "Uh, um, yeah, sure. We've got these guys. You go stop them, um...?"

"Wildfire!" she called as Mike scooped her up and hopped into the air. He took off like a shot and Santana shrieked despite herself. It felt like they were completely out of control; for all she knew, he'd forget how to brake again. She could just see Brittany following them, although she couldn't keep up with Mike's speed, and Quinn was running down the streets well behind them. 

And Puck was... somewhere.

* * *

"I can't let you out of this van," Tina said apologetically, but with undercurrents of pure steel. Artie looked at where she was blocking the door and then refocused on his communicators. He knew that the four in danger had clustered safely inside Mercedes' shields, but then static had taken over. For a couple of awful minutes they'd had no idea what was going on with their friends.

"Move," Blaine said to her in what was easily the harshest tone Artie had ever heard from him. "I am not kidding, Tina."

"Neither am I," she said. "I sucked up some energy from a streetlamp. I'm all charged up and ready to go."

He took a step forward and said, "Kurt's in trouble and you are blocking my exit. You're not super strong."

Tina's voice didn't waver. "Neither are you. You're not super-anything. And it's my job to not let you guys die because a bunch of unpowered targets ran in. If you take another step, I'll have to zap you and you'll be in pain or... or you'll really, _really_ like it, but you won't be able to move forward." There was a short pause. "I'll do it. Kurt would kill me if I let you run into danger."

"Dammit!" Blaine said and hit the side of the van hard. He practically threw himself against the floor. Artie glanced back. He was curled into a ball, every line tight with tension, and tears threatened to spill from his eyes. "Please be okay," he whispered and Artie turned back to his work.

"Turn up the power," Lauren suggested. "Maybe you need to punch through whatever's causing the static."

"Try changing the frequency!" Sam said, trying to lean in and touch the wires himself.

"Stop it!" Artie barked and they pulled back.

Sam looked annoyed for a second, as he clearly wanted to help, but then he stood and sat next to Blaine. "They'll be okay," he said. "These guys always lose. I promise, they'll be fine."

"This is real life, Sam. People die in real life." A shuddering breath fell from Blaine and he continued, "I just want to hear that he's okay."

"They're all going to be okay," Sam said with unshakable certainty. "Mercedes has those shields for a reason. She's going to keep everyone safe and then they'll pull off some huge attack and win. You'll see."

* * *

"Come on," Rachel begged Mercedes as she supported the other girl. "Please. Please keep going."

Her shields flickered around them. Sweat trickled down Mercedes' face as she forced herself to keep that armor up, and the glow around her hands built toward... whatever it would eventually do. She was at the limits of her powers as surely as Kurt had been in that alley, or Finn was when he used his mind to keep several tons of automobile from crashing down on their heads. Clearly, she was paying the price.

"It's hard," Mercedes whispered as Piledriver pitched another piece of wall at them. A few pebble-sized pieces of concrete got through momentary holes in the bubble. Rachel didn't want to think about what would happen when larger holes began to open. "I'm sorry. It's hard."

Glancing elsewhere in their tight knot of bodies, Rachel met Kurt's eyes. They were as grim as hers as he put all his remaining energy into keeping Finn upright. Finn had woken up, at least, but he still wavered from side to side. If he fell out of those shields, they both knew very well that a brick would instantly be sent flying at his skull. But his support was losing his grip on the adrenaline keeping him awake, and if Kurt fell and both of them collapsed....

"Please keep going," Rachel whispered to Mercedes once more. "Please."

"I'm trying," Mercedes said. She looked ready to falter, and a drop of sweat fell from her chin, but she was still going. "I'm...."

At first Rachel was struck with fear that she'd reached her limit, but then she realized what had Mercedes' attention: in the distance, Mike sped toward them with Santana in his arms. "Finn," she said intently. She knew Artie had thrown together a new communicator for Santana to replace the one she'd burned up, but after a roughhouse of a fight she didn't trust that it still worked. "Can you pass something on to Mike and Santana?"

He looked ready to pass out again, but pushed through the pain and nodded. Closing his eyes, Finn concentrated, wiped at the fresh trickle of blood from his nose, and nodded again. "Done."

Rachel turned back to the night sky as Mike sped toward them. She'd just barely been able to pick them out against the darkness, but if her plan held....

Mike overshot them and dropped Santana as he passed. In the seconds between being released and splattering the pavement, she turned into elemental fire and landed on Bulldozer's head. He shrieked and managed to throw her off, but at the expense of his blistered hands. His costume had fallen away in many places, and its metal helmet had just barely saved his head from a similar fate.

"What the hell?" Piledriver asked, spinning around with a car still held overhead. "Oh, fuck, there's no way they took out the other guys!"

"Guess again," Santana said and threw a fireball. It wasn't anywhere near as large as Rachel knew she could manage; she must be near her limits, too. But she still looked impressive, and at least for that instant the fight had tilted their way. "You okay?" she called over her shoulder. Her fire form was like a sodium light glaring across the entire block.

"Swift!" Rachel yelled at Mike when she saw him pass overhead. "Get the others here!" He nodded and flew off, and Rachel answered Santana. "Just keep them busy until the others arrive."

"Got it," Santana said confidently. Rachel tried not to think about how the street was a bit dimmer each second.

Piledriver growled and prepared to lob his car at Santana, only to fall into the pavement up to his knees. It stayed quicksand a second longer and then re-solidified around his legs. He sputtered in protest. "What the... what's going on? Who are these people?"

"Don't hurt her," Brittany ordered as she approached and landed. This was not the inconsequential picture that Rachel often had of the girl. She would no sooner let this man throw a car at Santana than Santana had let that street criminal shoot at Brittany. When she stalked forward through Santana's fading light, she was like a mountain lion approaching at sunset.

Sinking into the pavement had locked him in place, but Piledriver still had use of his arms and the car they held. He glanced toward Rachel and smirked. She didn't know why.

A second later, Bulldozer slammed his blistered arms against Mercedes' shield and it popped. He screamed in pain and fell backward, but the damage was done. "Mercedes," Rachel said nervously as she watched Piledriver's car pull back for a sure throw right at their heads. She was the only one of the four who wasn't half-dead on her feet; they wouldn't be able to run. There was no way they could run. "Mercedes. Mercedes!"

"I'm trying," Mercedes said as the bubble flickered in and out. "I'm trying." Santana tried to burn Piledriver like she had Bulldozer, but he moved the car like a flyswatter and she had to back up. "Oh no," Mercedes said frantically as she saw the car leave his hands. "No no no...."

For the second time that night, Rachel's death stopped right in front of her. The car screeched as it impacted _something_ , and then fell to the ground in a mangled heap. Santana's fire form had faded and Rachel was nearly blind until her eyes adjusted, so she heard their savior before she saw him.

"I will fucking _kill_ you," Puck said as he flung the car aside. He sounded as little like him as Brittany had when she protected Santana. Though he initially stalked toward Piledriver, Puck snapped back with inhuman speed when Bulldozed lunged again toward the group. His fist impacted the battered man hard enough to send him flying.

The other two members of the Wrecking Crew came limping up after Quinn, who blasted them with ice at each step. "The police were supposed to handle you!" she snarled. Rachel's stomach sank at the sight of their foes' full team. 

"These guys don't know what they're doing," panted one of them. (Thunderball?) "It was easy to get away from—"

Mike dropped out of the sky, landed on his head like Mario bouncing on a foe, and vanished back into the darkness.

Thunderball wobbled, but stayed upright. He and Wrecker leaned against each other and looked ready to collapse, as did Bulldozer when he rose, and Piledriver when he extracted himself from the asphalt. They were at their limits as they reconvened at the far end of the block. If their team pushed the Crew one more time, they probably wouldn't get back up.

Santana hadn't managed to call her fire form again, though. Brittany kept snapping her hand forward, but no more chaos spheres came. Finn's rescue had pushed him too far, Puck weaved where he stood, and Kurt moved only on willpower. Quinn was drained. Considering the speed that Mike had pulled out, he probably couldn't do much more of that head-bouncing. Maybe they could call Tina in, Rachel thought, and make the Crew run in fear a few times. That would tire them out. Maybe—

With a roar, the energy that had been building up around Mercedes' forearms leapt from her in a solid beam. It powered down the street, hit the Crew full-on, and they vanished inside its blinding blue-white light. The afterimage seared Rachel's vision and she was blind when it faded.

By the time her sight returned, the Crew was completely unconscious on the campus street.

That time, they didn't get up.

Mercedes, Finn, and Kurt collapsed to the street, panting, and Finn wiped his nose. When she felt her knees wobble, Rachel joined them. Brittany lunged for Santana, and Puck sort of... flopped on top of Rachel's group and smiled tiredly.

They'd won.

They'd just destroyed about a dozen buildings and twice as many cars.

But they'd won.

* * *

"They won!" Artie crowed and slammed his hand against the dashboard. "Holy crap that was scary and great."

"Come on!" Tina said as she listened to the communicators. "I hear _reporters!_ I saw some lights during the fight, I think they're that way—" She pointed and the other three took off running. "Hey!" she called after them. "Hey, you're not supposed to... oh well. Do you want me to push you?"

Artie smiled sadly. He'd read comic books. Barbara Gordon didn't get the glory when she organized the Birds of Prey from her wheelchair. "Nah," he said. "You'd better run if you want to get on camera."

"Artie," Tina said. "But...."

"I'll have a big moment. Just... this isn't gonna be it," he said, shrugging. Just like he'd only heard the first fight, and had stayed silent and confused as Kurt illusioned him. "Go on."

She smiled apologetically and then took off after the rest of the group. As her boots faded against the concrete, Artie sighed. Maybe he should go back to working on sex robots. Everyone would pay attention to the guy who made a good sex robot.

* * *

Lights.

Cameras.

_Action_ , Rachel thought as reporters swarmed. Despite her exhaustion, her smile grew. A quick glance around the team showed that nearly everyone looked as cheerful as she did. Even Finn looked awake, if not exactly healthy, and stood with only minor assistance from Kurt. "Hello, fair citizens of Columbus!" she said. 

They hadn't been arrested yet, so they were almost certainly covered under the collective decision that supervillains were responsible for any and all property damage, and superheroes were off the hook so long as they brought them in. "I'm Anthem," Rachel said and her smile wavered as she saw Sam, Blaine, and Lauren run into the crowd. Tina soon followed and merged with them, and Rachel continued, "These men had planned to tear everyone on this campus apart, but rest assured that they've been taken care of!"

"You're welcome," Mercedes said, sounding more than a little smug. Sam's eyes sparkled.

"Who are you?" asked one of the reporters. "Another Avengers shoot-off?"

"Uh, no," Santana said. "We're our own team, thank you very much. I'm Wildfire." She started pointing around the group and everyone said their codename in turn.

"And what's your team's name?" asked another reporter.

Everyone froze.

"We're the... um...." Santana stammered.

"Don't you even think it," Mercedes said when Rachel opened her mouth to say 'the Golden Stars.'

"The Awesomes," Finn said. Everyone turned to look at him very, very slowly. "Hey, you should have thought of a name."

"And the... the Awesomes are committed to looking out for the most vulnerable people of Ohio," Rachel continued. She and Finn would need to talk later. But for now, he could serve a far more important purpose: public relations. Her review of teen superhero teams said that the public _loved_ romances. She smiled dreamily and pulled Finn in for a deep, loving kiss that only barely tasted of blood.

Flashes exploded. For a moment Rachel thought of Nationals, and how their entire world had boiled down to the moment with her and Finn onstage.

Santana seemed to think much the same as she stared at them, muttered, "Not this time," and took a deep breath. "We will always be looking out for the people who need it!" she said in a voice just as booming and dramatic as Rachel's. She adjusted her mask and then urged Brittany up to hover just above the ground.

Then Santana caught Brittany's cheeks in her hands, pulled her close with a fierce determination, and kissed her. Her neck arched with the distance needed to reach the taller girl as she flew. Though it was undeniably more impressive than what Finn and Rachel had done—neither of them had _flown_ —Rachel knew that her friends weren't staring because of that.

"It's about time," Tina whispered.

"I didn't do that," Santana said softly when they broke apart for air, "to beat them."

"You sort of did," Brittany said back. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips were very pink.

"Not only to beat them," she amended and that seemed to be enough. They were behind codenames and masks, but Santana had just given Brittany what they all knew she wanted after their awkward moments in front of the choir: something public. The world didn't know, but those disguises didn't hide them from their friends.

"So, that's the...." Rachel tried not to sigh. "The Awesomes! I'm sure you'll be seeing us around more. Tell your friends! Let us know if you'd like to license us for merchandise!" She was about to say more, but Finn cut her off with another kiss. Mike and Tina followed suit. Like it had become too much to resist, the waiting boyfriends and girlfriend in the crowd broke through the line of reporters and claimed Kurt, Puck, and Mercedes for their own.

"We're dating," Sam told everyone after he and Mercedes finished their first, deep kiss.

"We figured," Quinn said dryly.

In a rush of triumph, the group waved to whom they hoped would be their adoring fans. Even those who'd been reluctant to join found themselves loving the attention. It was, Rachel thought as she found herself on the verge of tears, exactly what she'd always dreamed of.

As they were overwhelmed by the reporters and onlookers, no one thought of anything else: property damage, how they would get to their cars without being followed, or what they would do for a follow-up.

Or how their faces filled a news break on every local channel.


	12. The 96th Street Station

"You know that this was just when we're in our masks, right?" Santana asked Brittany as they walked to her car. The police had sectioned off the area around their victory on campus and were holding back the crowd and media. They apparently thought that it was their role to assist these new superheroes, and they'd take advantage of their cooperation while the novelty lasted.

"What was?" Brittany asked. She hadn't stopped smiling.

"Me kissing you in front of everyone."

Brittany's good mood vanished. "Oh," she said. She clearly wanted to add more, but words wouldn't come. Looking at the ground, she fumbled for her keys and opened her car door by touch. "Oh."

"Just... I _can't_ yet, okay?" Santana pleaded. She leaned forward to tuck a stray lock of Brittany's hair into place. Although she let her, Brittany was rigid as Santana brushed her cheek. "Wildfire can do that. She doesn't have classes, she doesn't have parents, she doesn't have a hometown that can feel like a plastic bag over my head...."

"Uh huh," Brittany said shortly and slid behind the wheel. Santana's heart ached as she took the passenger seat. "You can put on whatever music you want."

"Brit...."

"I get it," Brittany said as she turned to her and managed a joyless smile. "I got my hopes up, but I get it."

"Brit, come on." Santana put on her seatbelt when Brittany gave her a pointed look. "Don't be like this."

The engine roared. They raced forward and rounded a corner in the direction of the freeway. "We needed to get away from the crowd," Brittany said without looking away from the windshield, "before they realized who was in the car. They could look up my plates."

"That's really smart," Santana said. "You're so much smarter than people give you credit for." Wait, maybe that wasn't the best way to go about a plea for forgiveness: 'everyone else thinks you're dumb, but I don't!' 

"I'm fine if people figure out who I am, Santana," Brittany said and pried off her mask. "Someone would catch them before they got too close, and I could go fight them. But you want your mask on. So I drove off before anyone could see my license plate. You're welcome."

Yeah, they really weren't talking about a couple of molded black masks. "It's not just those four guys tonight," Santana said, choosing to stick to this weird metaphor discussion. "They came stomping down the road and we knocked them out, yay, go team. But they're not everyone. We don't even know who could come after us."

"Uh huh. Makes sense. Did you pick this station?" Brittany said and turned up the radio.

It hurt too much to say anything more, so she let the music take over their conversation. Miles down the road, Santana wriggled free of her costume and pulled on jeans and a tank top. "I can hold the wheel for a second if you want to change," she offered. Brittany looked disturbed at the suggestion of not driving while they were shooting down the freeway at seventy miles per hour, and Santana explained, "I thought you'd want to get out of it in case we get pulled over or something. So they won't see you in your costume."

At least Brittany was listening to her, Santana thought as Brittany nodded and then pulled over to the shoulder for a quick clothing swap. Watching her writhe around had the sudden and unwelcome intrusion of remembering Kurt showing off his flexibility to everyone in Rachel's basement. People had _clapped_ , she thought sadly. They clapped for two boys kissing. Those people were safe and she'd kissed Brittany right in front of them.

Why didn't she think that was a huge freaking step to make?

They started driving again. Brittany didn't pull away when Santana threaded their fingers together, but eventually they passed through some light rain and she had to turn on the windshield wipers. After that few minutes with both hands on the wheel, she laid her hand back down on the rest between them. Since she didn't reach for Santana, Santana didn't reach for her.

"I'll call you tomorrow, okay?" Santana asked as she leaned through the open window.

"Yeah, okay," Brittany said. So she wasn't being cut entirely out, Santana thought, even though Brittany was unhappy about everything. It wasn't the big romantic moment that their first public kiss should have been, but it wasn't the total disaster that a fight could have easily turned into. That was something. "Bye."

"Bye," Santana said, pulling back, and wrapped her arms around herself. She watched Brittany's taillights vanish into the night and didn't turn toward her front walk until they'd disappeared entirely around a corner. 

Shaking out of things, Santana patted herself down. Her mask and costume were safely hidden inside her bag, her hair was sleek and styled, and her communicator was off, silent, and stowed. _Oh, right,_ she thought as she fumbled for a side pocket. They'd all turned off and hidden their cell phones when they'd moved to using communicators, as then there was no chance of being called at the wrong time and giving away their positions. She always had her cell available, and so she quickly thumbed it back on to complete the illusion of normality.

A second later, Santana glanced back at her phone as it started buzzing.

She'd just spent the night with almost everyone she talked to on a regular basis.

So why did she have forty-three messages?

* * *

Rachel stirred and yawned when she felt her car roll to a stop. It took her a few blinks to realize they were idling in her driveway. "Um." She rubbed a hand across her face, grimaced, and peeled off her mask. "The opener is between the seats."

Blaine nodded and felt for it. The garage door soon rumbled skyward. As the sole person who hadn't exhausted himself, he'd taken Rachel's keys from her when she seemed groggy and dangerous behind the wheel. She, Finn, and Kurt had slept the entire drive back, too tired to change out of their costumes or think about the effects of everything that had happened that night. Adrenaline left her feeling hollow after it had fled, and Rachel yawned again as they pulled into the garage and the engine quieted.

"You're sure your dads really aren't around?" Finn asked as he looked at how they were dressed.

Others thought Leory and Hiram were gone far too often, even as they enjoyed the privacy her house gave them, but Rachel knew better. Her dads were just very busy. When they returned they doted on her and more than made up for it. Besides, it was their jobs that had paid for all her childhood dance and music lessons, along with every original cast recording she could ever want. Those things didn't simply appear out of thin air. "They had to go back to Chicago," she said with another yawn. "Or St. Louis, this time. I forget. Their itinerary is on the refrigerator."

"How's your head?" Kurt asked Finn sympathetically.

Finn groaned, but at least he was conscious and upright. From that alone he seemed in much better sorts than Kurt had been after his nosebleed. "Better. It still feels like I walked into something, but it'll be okay." He picked up on the underlying question—perhaps from inference, perhaps from telepathy—and added, "Nowhere near as dangerous as what you did. Don't worry."

"That's a handy phrase," Blaine said and the three of them abruptly remembered their chauffeur. He clicked the door controller again and they were soon shielded from any prying eyes. "Don't worry. Funny."

"We didn't expect it to get that out of hand," Kurt said. "Really."

"There's an understatement," Rachel said dryly. Dividing their powers like that had been sloppy. They'd have to do better in the future. She glanced at her phone, felt a fresh wave of exhaustion roll over her, and shoved it away again. They were all battered and bruised. Turning on their cell phones could wait until morning. "How long do you have before you need to get home? Finn, it would be good if you stayed here until you looked a little better."

He nodded. "Yeah, good plan. Uh, we can probably take an hour or so."

"I do need to leave soon," Blaine said. He'd left his car there when they'd driven in together. It was unsurprising that his last-minute story wouldn't come with an overly late curfew. 

"That's all right," Rachel said, but he didn't seem to like that answer. 

Blaine unbuckled his seatbelt and shoved it off, and then practically stormed inside. The three in the car shared a look before Kurt went after him. "Blaine!" Kurt pleaded and they hurried to follow. "I know this was a huge night. I'm sorry that I wasn't more talkative on the drive back."

It took a few seconds of sputtering before Blaine said, "You think I'm upset that you weren't _chatty?_ "

"Well." Kurt looked himself over and brushed some lingering brick dust off his leather outfit. He winced as he moved certain ways; bruises had to be forming. Rachel certainly felt hers. "I mean... we did win."

"I just. I don't." Blaine exhaled. "This has been a lot to take in. Twenty-four hours ago I was just worried about _him_ , and now I've found out that my boyfriend is superpowered and that he's been out fighting the forces of darkness and whatnot for weeks. And got hurt doing so. Which you weren't going to tell me the truth about. And _then_ I was trapped in a van, only able to listen as you were so in danger that you could have...." His eyes swam with unshed tears.

"Hey," Kurt said, and pulled him in for a hug when Blaine's words failed him. From the way Blaine shook, he'd been wracked with helpless terror as he listened to what might be Kurt's last minutes of life. Then he'd been left to stew in the car for two hours, essentially alone as he drove, as Kurt developed those bruises from the fight he'd so willingly joined. No wonder Blaine's emotions were in a fragile state. "I'm okay. Everything is all right, no one got hurt too much, and a lot of people are alive tonight who wouldn't have been. Those are all very good things, aren't they?"

"Of course they are," Blaine said. "I've just gone through feeling an awful lot of things tonight, and it's like none of you even care how close you came to being hurt. Or worse. Even Sam and Lauren treated everything like a game. It's left me feeling a little alone. And I just... I love you so much. Ever since this summer started I've felt either locked out or terrified. When I saw you in your bed, looking so pale, and I thought that someone had...." After fumbling for an answer, Kurt pulled Blaine close again and they stood there for a while. Blaine's hands roamed across him, not in a sexual way but like he was reassuring himself of Kurt's safety with every steady breath and warm limb. 

"I love you, too. And I don't want to do this forever," Kurt said quietly. "This isn't my new life. I just went with them to save the people on campus. I want the same life we've talked about before." That let even more tension out of Blaine, enough to see, and he smiled at hitting the right thing to say. "Nothing has changed, I promise."

Blaine nodded and the last of the argument drained from his expression. "Do you understand why I got so scared tonight? And when I saw you in that bed?"

"I do. I really do. I'm sorry." They stood there for a few breaths more until those fears had withered and drifted away. Kurt stepped back and smiled. "There," he said. "Everything's okay."

"Everything's not okay," Blaine corrected, and Kurt looked annoyed at... well, it was Kurt, after all. He was probably annoyed at not being able to just get away with something. "I still have a lot of problems with what's been happening, but at least now I feel like we can work through them."

"Fair enough," Kurt allowed. Though tension returned, it felt far healthier: a challenge to be overcome rather than a pit they couldn't hope to cross. But then something began to pull at his expression and he hesitated, frowned, and took another step back. "Wait." Kurt squinted, shook his head, and tried to work through whatever he was hearing. "Twenty-four hours ago you were worried about who?"

"I didn't... I mean." Blaine sighed. "I'd really rather not discuss it, if there's some other reason for what I was seeing. And maybe all of this superhero activity is that reason. It's been a long night, let me just get you a drink while you rest up."

Kurt's brows furrowed. Rachel and Finn tried to look like they weren't eavesdropping. "Wait, what were you seeing?"

"I'd prefer to—"

"Spit it out!" Kurt said. Despite their sweet moment, he seemed ready to stomp his boot. In fairness, Rachel amended, it had been a long day.

Of course, it had been a long day for Blaine, too. He looked more than a little annoyed at Kurt's short tone, but was still diplomatic as he answered, "I've been very uncomfortable with how Puck has clearly been... showing you some romantic attention."

The three of them were absolutely silent for a long, still second. If Blaine had looked irritated before, it was nothing compared to his glare when Kurt, Rachel, and Finn burst out in laughter that soon had them in tears. "Oh god," Finn gasped as he wiped at his eyes. "Hurts. Ow. Can't stop."

"I'm sorry," Kurt said after taking a few deep breaths to steady himself. He fluttered a hand at his face for fresh air. "I'm okay." His next breath was shaky and again dissolved into giggles, and he had to try a few more times to repeat, "I'm okay."

"This really isn't funny," Blaine said tightly. His facade was cracking, and seeing him coming close to losing control toned down their amusement. "I know I've been kept on the dark on a _lot_ of things. And maybe this is some sort of payback for taking so long to come around, I don't know, but I've felt completely closed off. Then I hear you describe him as someone who made your life hell, but you're still...."

"Still what?" Kurt asked.

"I can't explain it," Blaine reluctantly replied. He shot a dark look at Finn and Rachel for inserting themselves into the discussion, when previously they'd had the decency to make a pretense at privacy. "But he's been very affectionate around you. You have to have noticed."

"Oh, that's just Puck," Kurt waved off. "When he doesn't like you, he's terrible to be near. But then he comes around and he's willingly offering to put himself on the line to keep you safe." He smiled brightly. "I know you're worried because he used to bully, but he bullied _everyone._ This wasn't a laser focus situation. It wasn't personal."

"Is that supposed to make it sound better?" Blaine asked dubiously. "Someone doing what he did _is_ making it personal."

"I mean that he never terrified me," Kurt amended. "And he's really tried to better himself over the long haul. I won't say that we're friends, but I really have no reason not to be friendly with him." He raised an eyebrow. "And he is quite possibly the least likely boy I have ever met who would try to make a move on me."

"We are talking about the boy who plied Quinn with alcohol while she was dating Finn, aren't we?" Blaine asked dryly. "Not to mention slashing a rival's tires and nearly getting himself into legal trouble, and then stealing an ATM and finally earning that criminal record? I'm just pointing out that he's hardly reliable, or a model citizen. And just because it didn't affect you that badly doesn't excuse his behavior."

"I never told you about the tires," Kurt said. "Or how he landed in juvie. And did... did we actually talk about what happened with him and Quinn?"

"I asked around," Blaine admitted. "I was worried."

"He is straight," Kurt said. "I swear, he can probably find a pair of breasts through two walls and a set of doors, like his penis sends off radar."

"And you'd be ever so willing to consider the possibility that he's bisexual," Blaine said very pointedly.

"Oh god." Kurt groaned and looked toward the ceiling before plastering on a cheerful tone. "Noah Puckerman is straight because _he is straight._ We get along now, but I am not secretly dating him. He just loves it when he gets the chance to stand up and prove himself, and taking care of me after my nosebleed gave him that chance. He was showing off. And remember, you are my first... everything that matters, okay?" Kurt asked. He smiled until Blaine smiled back. "I am sorry that I didn't tell you about this, but I promise that's all I've hidden. I love you, remember?"

"I do remember that," Blaine said ruefully. "From a day when everything made sense. Back before you were calling yourself a ninja." He saw Kurt's expectant face, and with a sigh that morphed into another smile he replied, "I love you, too. And those powers of yours are...."

"Are?" Kurt supplied after he didn't continue.

"Very interesting," Blaine finished. A blush put a lie to his typically calm demeanor. "Had you been... stretching at all before I came over, or—" Kurt casually reached behind him and pulled one leg far past what looked comfortable, and Blaine swallowed. "I suppose stretching's not necessary, then."

After letting his foot fall back to the floor, Kurt straightened Blaine's shirt collar as he said, "You are who I go on dates with. You are who I talk about the future with. You are my ticket to a brighter world, and I'm yours in every way that matters. All right?"

"And I'm yours," Blaine repeated meaningfully. He shook his head and chuckled. "I suppose I was letting my imagination run away with me. I trust you, and if you've said that nothing's ever happened with him, then nothing has."

"Nothing has," Kurt confirmed. He kept smoothing Blaine's shirt like an obsession. "We only hid what we were doing to keep people safe, and we only took a risk tonight to save lives."

"I want to know before you do anything else, all right?" Blaine said. "And I may put my foot down."

"Do you get to 'put your foot down' on my life?" Kurt asked pointedly.

"I may express serious reservations," Blaine said. "And let you know how much I would appreciate it if you respected my fears." He waited until Kurt nodded at that compromise, and then leaned in to kiss him. "All right. It has been an unbelievably long day and I really need to get home. I'll call you tomorrow. Love you," he said and started toward the door.

"Love you, too. You can stop pretending that you're not listening, now," Kurt said as he turned around and the door closed.

Finn and Rachel poked their heads above the couch's back. After including themselves during the laughter over Puck, they'd wanted to finish listening to everything. They'd slumped progressively further during the conversation until their eyes were just high enough to see, like they were alligators in water. "You could have gone to another part of the house if you really cared about privacy," Rachel said after she and Kurt studied each other.

"Your inimitable talent clearly extends to apologies," Kurt said.

Well, it was true. As she heard Blaine's car pull away, Rachel hopped up and gestured toward the front hall. "I'll just go lock the door, and then get drinks. Finn, you still need to rest up." She brushed past Kurt, who still seemed to be waiting for an acknowledgment that perhaps they could have left them alone, and clicked the deadbolt into place.

* * *

"That was pretty great," Lauren said as her car rolled to a stop in front of Puck's house. "Seriously, you should have told me before." She'd taken everything weirdly well, like she'd just watched a kickass summer blockbuster with her boyfriend in the starring role. Mike and Tina had filled the back seat, and when they weren't cuddling they talked excitedly with her about everything that had happened. It had kept all of them busy during the drive.

That was good, because Puck had zoned out the entire time. It was like they'd teleported from Columbus to Lima. One minute he was in front of television cameras and making out with his girlfriend: his hot, cool, strong girlfriend who he dug and respected. He hadn't really known what it was like to feel that way about someone before her. 

Instead of telling him he was stupid for liking video games, and telling her that her interests were stupid in return, they learned to compromise. He got to list his theories about the genealogy of the Belmont Family in exchange for listening to her explain why someone named Jacob Black was one, a werewolf, and two, evil and dedicated to ruining her 'OTP.' He wasn't dating her to be popular, or because she fit into a mold of his perfect partner. He was dating Lauren because they were friends who got along, made each other better, and liked making out.

For months she'd felt like the most overwhelming and _real_ thing in his heart outside of blood relatives. Of course, very different feelings bloomed for Lauren than for his mom or sister or for a tiny little girl he'd last seen in a hospital nursery. She wormed into him in ways that all his pool clients or random girls at school hadn't. Even going through having a child with Quinn didn't compare, because he'd veered between being a total dick and wanting to be better than his father while she just wanted to move on. That wasn't a connection. In the end, it was just biology.

Those were most of the things that had run through Puck's mind on the freeway. It was lucky she'd been driving, as he probably would have merged into a car. There something else that had been on constant loop and he had no idea how to deal with it.

Ever since Kurt had done the splits earlier, that image kept clawing its way back inside. That was okay, though, since it was unnatural and looked painful. That was the sort of thing that floated up without warning, like some contortionist equivalent of a football-to-the-groin video. So when it kept coming back to him as the day went on, he could excuse it.

But then everything had gone to hell in Columbus and Puck had stopped that thrown car.

He hadn't known he could move that fast.

He couldn't have done it to save Mercedes. He couldn't have done it to save Finn or Rachel, even.

Even as rage filled him, he'd nearly been driven to tears with the thought of what he'd almost just lost: Kurt. He'd run there in time to protect Kurt, he'd stopped a car with his body to protect Kurt. The only thought in his furious mind was simple: don't dare touch what was his.

What the hell was going on?

"Hey," Lauren said and Puck snapped back to awareness with an almost physical force. "You still awake?"

"Yeah. Sorry." He swallowed. "I guess I was just thinking about stuff." Like how Kurt had just casually reached back and started twisting himself like a knot in a rope....

Oh crap. Was he one of those dudes who liked dudes? Not full-on gay, but like... David Bowie or Freddie Mercury? Wait, but they were both awesome. Freddie had it going on with some chick for years, right? And Bowie landed Iman. _Iman._ They weren't less because of it, they were just too much man to deny anyone who came near. 

Huh. Okay. That was one way to look at it. Maybe it should have felt weird to have his mind linger over the way Kurt's back had arched, but instead it was comfortable like a well-worn pair of jeans. It was almost _too_ easy to think Kurt was hot, Puck realized with a bit of panic. He might be okay with being Freddie or Bowie. Heading into Elton territory was not cool. 

What did he think of Finn? Gross, his brain instantly told him. He could picture a Mr. Yuck sticker plastered on the side of his skull. Sam? No way. Artie? Ha, no way in hell. Mike? Well... Puck's eyebrows rose. Maybe Mike. Mike was bendy. Mike had been doing all those flips right beside Kurt. Maybe he just had a gymnast fetish. And gymnasts were hot, right? That was about as normal as a man could get.

"Yo, Puckerman," Lauren said good-naturedly. "You're zoning out. Go to sleep."

"It was just a big day," Puck said with a fake laugh. Worst case scenario, he _was_ Bowie, right? Not Elton? He looked Lauren over, was pleased to feel a reaction as he looked at the curve of her shirt collar, and said with relief, "I love your tits."

"Sweet talker," she said dryly. "Seriously, go to sleep." She looked him over. "No, change your pants, then go."

"Thanks for the reminder," he said and began the awkward work of changing back into his jeans. Mike and Tina had done so shamelessly on the drive home, but he'd been a million miles away until they'd been dropped off and they were parked in front of his door. If she hadn't told him otherwise, Puck would have walked right back into the house in his costume. "Talk to you tomorrow," he said and leaned over to kiss her.

"Talk to you then," Lauren agreed and grinned. "I'm dating a superhero."

The need to turn on his charm to maximum hit Puck in a wave, so she wouldn't know what had been in his head. "Just had to catch up to you, baby," he said and winked at her. That did it, and Lauren looked incredibly pleased as she drove off. Puck exhaled, watched her go, and decided he needed to go watch some YouTube videos of panties being thrown at Bowie and Freddie. It was late; he'd have to keep the volume down so he didn't wake anyone up.

Though he'd expected the house to be asleep, Puck looked with surprise at the lit dining room when he walked inside. His little sister Sarah was sitting at the table far past her normal bedtime and was flipping through a well-worn book. "Why are you up?" he asked suspiciously as he hit the fridge and grabbed the first can his hand found.

"I was waiting for you," she said, licked her finger, and dramatically turned the page.

"Why?"

"Noah!" his mother called from upstairs. "Is that you?" He could hear her rushing to join them.

Puck eyed Sarah suspiciously as he fumbled with the tab on his can. "What's going on?"

"I don't know," Sarah said and turned the page again. There was no way she'd read anything that time, the little drama queen. "But it sounds like you are in a ton of trouble."

* * *

Rachel balanced everything in her arms and saw that the light on the phone was flashing. She gave momentary consideration to trying to check her messages, gave up, and deposited the snacks and first aid supplies in the living room with the boys. Now with free hands, she returned to the kitchen and dialed the code to listen to their voice mail.

"Hi, sweetie," said one of her dads. His voice sounded strange. Maybe they'd bought her a present in Chicago (or St. Louis) and were trying to hide it, Rachel thought, and smiled sleepily. "We have to come home early. Um, stay around the house, okay?"

"Okay," she told the recording and tried not to laugh. Well, she would stay around the house _now._ They could hardly hold it against her if she'd left it before she'd heard that message. Considering things, Rachel hung up on any more voice mails and then punched in the short code to turn off incoming calls. Once she managed to fall asleep for the night, she didn't want some drunk accidentally dialing her number.

After a quick detour to her room, she returned to the living room wearing a far more comfortable pair of pajamas. She was bruised, she'd confirmed, but there were no open wounds. Not even scratches. "All the shrapnel was blocked," she said to Kurt, who took a beat to process her compliment and then looked proud.

"Can I ask you something?" Kurt then asked Finn as he slouched on the sofa like he would never move again.

"Yeah, either you need to stop poofing up your hair so much or Blaine needs to stop plastering down his." Finn narrowed his eyes in thought. "Or he could just get taller."

"I was not wondering that, Finn," Kurt said flatly.

"Yes you were," Finn said, grinned at him, and tapped the side of his head knowingly.

The disgruntled look Kurt gave him in return was a classic, Rachel thought as she curled up in a chair opposite the couch. She'd considered sitting next to Finn, but she was really starting to feel her bruises from when Kurt had thrown her away from the Suburban. The soft cushions of her dad's favorite recliner were a safer bet. "What is it, Kurt?" she asked to get them back on track.

"This is going to sound incredibly strange," Kurt began, "but... you've had a lot of dreams about a specific subway station?"

"Yeah," Finn said after a moment of thought. "Totally forgot that I said anything about that."

With a quick bite of his lower lip, Kurt continued, "I only remembered it because I thought about how tired I was, and then I wondered if I'd have another New York dream, and...." He shook his head. "Never mind. But you said it was the 96th Street Station?"

Finn blinked. "Yeah. Wow, that was this morning. How did you remember that number?"

Delicately, Kurt answered, "Because it's the same one I've always gone to in my dreams."

What? But that was an impossible coincidence, Rachel thought. She pulled on her rough mental map of the city and placed 96th Street: far into the Upper West Side, well away from anywhere they'd visited on their trip. Wait, she thought after a second of hesitation. How had she been so sure that it was the Upper _West_ Side? 96th Street was on the east side of Central Park, too.

A heavy fog of uncertainty settled across them. Kurt and Finn kept glancing at each other, frowning, and then looking away in thought. It was Kurt who eventually spoke again. "There was one building I kept coming out of," Kurt said with half-lidded eyes as he retreated into memories. "From there I could either turn left and go to the station, or—"

"Or right and go to the park," Finn added. He looked to be in his own dream world, too.

Kurt sat very still before he continued. "Yes. I'd walk under trees. It was... there was this big street at the end of the block. I'd go one more block past it, turn right and keep walking."

"Yeah, onto Broadway," Finn agreed without hesitating. "I thought Broadway was full of lights and stuff, but around there it was mostly full of little restaurants."

"It was Broadway," Kurt said in obvious shock. "That's right, it was Broadway. And the station was under construction. They'd just started renovating it." 

"How were you both having the exact same dream?" Rachel asked when they stared at each other, at a logjam. "What's going on?"

"I don't know," Kurt said. "Finn? Did... did someone do something to us in New York? Can you look at my brain and see if it looks funny?"

"What am I looking for?" Finn asked. "Funny how?"

"I don't know!" Kurt said desperately. "You're the telepath!"

"Well, you have weird psychic powers, too! Give me a hint!" Finn said. But Kurt clearly had nothing to offer and so he sighed, squinted at Kurt, and sat there motionless for at least thirty seconds.

"Well?" Kurt eventually asked.

"Don't talk, I'm trying to avoid the Captain Kirk stuff." Finn grimaced. "Okay, shouldn't have mentioned it. Now it's all I can see."

Rachel tilted her head as Kurt smiled in mingled apology and amusement. Boys were so strange.

Everything was quiet for a while. Rachel could hear a neighbor's dog barking and a lone car driving past them on the street. Despite the impossible magnitude of what they'd done in Columbus, it was a sleepy night in Lima. Had it really just been a few hours earlier that she'd feared for her life? That Kurt had tried to shield her body with his? No wonder Blaine had felt like he was the only one upset by everything that had happened. Given even a short time away from the worst of the fight, they were all acting like it was almost... normal.

Finn pulled back. He looked overwhelmed. 

"What did you see?" Kurt asked worriedly, probing at the side of his head like that would reveal something.

"The memories of walking to the subway station," Finn said slowly. "They're... they're real."

Kurt laughed uneasily. "How can they be real? I've never lived in New York. I've been there once, and we never went near that part of the city. Are you sure you're doing that right?"

"Look, you told me to check things out and I did!" Finn frowned. "I don't know how I can tell they're real, but they are. It's like tasting real Coke and Pepsi instead of that crap you bring home. I know when it's diet, okay?" As his offense passed, the implications of Finn's word struck him. "Wait, so you... so you're actually remembering living in New York."

"So are you," Kurt said.

Finn shook his head. "I can't check my own memories like that."

"But you remembered all the same things as me!" Kurt insisted. "If I was really there, and you saw the same things, then doesn't it make sense that you were, too?" He waited for Finn to nod and then sank back with his hand against his forehead. "Oh my god, somehow we forgot that we actually lived in New York. I bet we got our powers there."

"And when we went back there, they woke back up?" Finn guessed.

Kurt nodded fiercely. "This makes sense. I mean, it makes no sense whatsoever to say that we just completely forgot that we used to live there and somehow we got super powers, but... but it also makes total sense!" He hopped up and started pacing around the room as Rachel tried her best to remember any specifics about the city. Surely they couldn't be the only two. "There had to be others there," he continued, like he knew what Rachel had been thinking.

"Why?" Finn asked. "Just because everyone else got powers, too?"

Kurt shook his head. "It's not just that. Santana mentioned that she'd been dreaming repeatedly about Brooklyn, and she had no clue why she was imagining herself somewhere that we didn't visit. Which probably means...."

"That Santana lived in Brooklyn!" Rachel finished excitedly. "This is amazing. When we got there for Nationals, it felt so right, like it was where I'd always dreamed of going. But it also felt...." She struggled for the right word. Her hand tried to snatch it from the air. "In retrospect," she slowly said, "it felt like coming home."

The way Kurt pointed at her suggested that he was thinking much the same. He let himself muse for a bit before continuing. His boots paced steadily against the floor. "We were wondering what gave us these powers. We must have gotten them in New York. Maybe something attacked us and gave us amnesia?"

That did make sense! If they'd been attacked, it would be natural for their parents to try to take them to safety. Despite Lima's high crime rate, it was certainly much safer than a metropolis famously populated by supervillains. There they had to worry about bullies and car accidents, not about memory-wiping creatures with a taste for superpowered teenagers. 

"Can you remember anything?" Finn asked her.

Rachel tried, but she had to give up and shake her head. The most she had were flashes of familiarity; certainly nothing to compare to the walking tour they apparently remembered. But then, she added to herself, she had been sure which side of the city they'd been on. Maybe that meant something?

"We've used our powers more than you," Kurt said. "And who else probably came close to her limits, weeks back?"

"Santana," Rachel said. "That's it. It has to be it. Finn, you're really remembering things after you went so far tonight. Kurt and Santana both pushed themselves hard on that first visit to Columbus. In comparison, I've barely been able to use my powers much at all." The impossibility of their discussion began to overwhelm her, and Rachel felt dizziness cloud her head like a thick dark fog. Excitement helped her to power through as surely as effort. "Well then. Let's see. Artie and Noah also constantly use theirs, I think. Have they pushed themselves so far? Well, maybe repeated use does the trick or... I don't know! What's happening?"

"I was remembering some stuff even before tonight," Finn said thoughtfully. "Now it's pouring in, but I bet something's there for everyone. Maybe if we talk to them, we can work through some of the blocks? Make them remember more?"

Kurt hurried in front of Finn and sat on the edge of the coffee table. For a moment Rachel thought about telling him not to sit there, but decided to let things pass. "We were remembering the same path to the subway station," he said. "That means we were coming from the same place."

"That's true," Finn said, but then stiffened and repeated, "That's true! Wait, what the hell? We were living together back then?" He hesitated, tilted his head to the side like he was hearing something, and repeated, "We were living together."

They had sailed far past strange and into completely unbelievable, and yet no one wanted to stop. Rachel grabbed a notepad and started jotting down anything that they could drag free from their spotty memories. "I remember...." Kurt squeezed his eyes shut hard, like he could block out everything about Ohio to clear his mind. "The fourth floor."

Finn looked uncertain, but then a slow smile began to spread across his face. "Yeah. Forty... eight?" But he instantly shook his head. "No. Wrong apartment number. Forty- _three._ " Rachel could practically see that imagined eight on the door change as he recalled wherever he’d once lived. "And... and you walked in and there was a table to your left. The TV and stuff was right in front of you."

"Right, right!" Kurt said excitedly. "Oh my god, I can see it. This is so weird. Parquet flooring. It must have been pre-war, picturing the architecture. And... I can see the canopy in front of the door! 124 on...." He burst out laughing. "124 West 93rd! That was our building! Apartment 43!"

Finn started laughing, too. By the end it was closer to a giggle. "We totally used to live near Central Park!"

"That’s probably why they could only afford two bedrooms," Kurt said easily, then started. His eyes looked ready to pop out of his head. "That’s _right._ We had the same room. Oh my god, did we seriously have bunk beds? How pathetic were we?"

"I wonder if we, um, argued at all," Finn said, coughing. Kurt shot him a knowing look; Rachel wondered what she’d missed. She knew better than to speak up, though. It would be a foolish move to interrupt the recollections. "I don’t think so, though." His brow furrowed. "I remember talking when stuff got hard, with school and life and whatever. I’m pretty sure that it was kind of nice to share that room."

Kurt ran a hand through his hair. He looked to be in utter disbelief of everything they were discussing, and yet delighted over it at the same time. "I’m still stuck on the fact that my decorating sense was so off-base that I actually allowed _bunk beds_ to come near me. Who buys those when they’re... when would we have moved in, fourteen? Fifteen?"

The response from Finn was distracted and short. He sounded like he was already thinking of other things: their old school, perhaps, or a pet. "Nah, we had that since we were kids." But as soon as the words were out of his mouth, Finn paused with his jaw still half-open. He looked confused.

"Since we were...." Kurt drew back. A thin line of confusion scored the space between his eyebrows. They shot abruptly up his forehead and his hand covered his mouth. "Oh my god."

"This is weird," Finn said as he scratched his temple. He looked ready to shake his head like a dog. More memories must be rattling around like pinballs, bouncing off walls and lighting up connections when they struck. "Yeah. Yeah, I remember getting that bed a really long time ago. It’s crazy, but I swear it feels like—"

"You’re actually my brother," Kurt said in a tiny, terrified voice. Chalky, sickly tones swept over him and he looked ready to crumple where he stood. No one dared say anything. Color returned suddenly and Kurt shot all the way to bright red. He flailed his hands, gasped for air, and then backed away from them as he began a waterfall of, "Ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew!"

He bolted for the bathroom and slammed the door behind him. Rachel inched toward it, dizzy. "Ew" was still being shouted inside. "Kurt?" she asked. "Are you okay?" The sound of drawers opening and closing sent a flash of fear through her. There were many dangerous things inside a bathroom. Glancing over her shoulder showed how stunned Finn looked, and _he_ hadn’t been the one fantasizing about his own kin. The sound of another door slamming jolted Rachel with fear. The bathroom had pills. It had razors. "Kurt!" she said and pounded on the door. "What are you doing?"

"Where is your rubbing alcohol?" he shouted. "I can’t find the damn bottle!"

"I will find you vodka if you want to drink yourself into a stupor," Rachel said as she rattled the handle. "Although I do _not_ recommend that approach. But you cannot be foolish enough to ignore the fact that rubbing alcohol is not safe to—"

The door swung open enough to reveal a sliver of Kurt’s face. "I do not want to drink it. I want to disinfect my entire body."

"Oh." Rachel shot another nervous glance at Finn. He had yet to move. "Bottom shelf of the cabinet against the wall."

"Thank you," Kurt said. The door slammed shut.

Finn was still a pale, stunned statue when she turned to him. He'd stood, but then stayed there like he didn't know where to go. "Whoa," he managed. "This is... uh. Wow."

"Was he right?" Rachel asked in disbelief. This was just so ridiculous, and yet if they were flinging around superpowers and unearthing memories from a hidden past in New York City, was anything truly outside the realm of possibility?

With a heavy sigh, Finn sank back onto the nearest chair. It was a fortunate thing that it had been close; too much further and he might have collapsed onto the floor. "If he’s not, then Mom and Dad got married when we were way too young to remember it." He jolted and silently repeated the words ‘Mom and Dad’ that had flowed so easily from his mouth. "Wait. Then why... why did they split up when they moved here?" Finn asked Rachel with a pleading tone that demanded a real attempt at an answer.

"I don’t know," she admitted. "I can’t remember things yet, Finn." She perched on the armrest of the chair and his arm snaked immediately around her. It was a firm, comforting gesture; she felt more like a teddy bear than a girlfriend. Rachel didn't complain about her bruises. "If I had to guess, then whatever put us here with all our memories removed, well... it probably wanted to keep us away from each other. Who would have imagined that all of us would come together when we all started so far apart?" Many of them had been so very alone: herself, Kurt, Mercedes. Some had rare friendships. Some had ties to many others at school, but seemed unfulfilled within them.

Given a little time, though, they’d all found each other again.

"I have a brother," Finn said. "I mean, a real, blood... we're the same age."

The implications hit her and Rachel almost laughed. That night they'd fought back famous supervillains, had nearly died, and had discovered a hidden past in another state that had likely given them their powers. And yet it was _this_ that seemed the most impossible. "Twins. Not identical, I suppose."

Finn managed the laughter that Rachel had fought back. It probably kept him from crying. "I didn't make the connection because Tina zaps people's minds, too. But...."

"She's more like an energy vampire," Rachel finished. Tina affected other people's minds, but her own brain had nothing to do with what happened to her targets. All this time, Finn and Kurt's powers had uniquely overlapped and no one thought anything of it. "You two both have psychic powers and you're the only ones who do." With a glance at the door, she whispered, "I'll be right back, okay?" and walked to the bathroom again. "Kurt, I just want to make sure that you're all right."

"I'm... just give me a minute."

Fair enough. She returned to Finn's armrest and perched there again. "How are you doing?"

"I'm okay," Finn said slowly. "Maybe you wouldn't think so, but we already live together, you know? This is huge, but I'm not about to start knocking over chairs or something."

The phrasing there made her pull back. "Do you think this is bad?"

"No," Finn said instantly, and then seemed to consider his reaction. "No," he repeated more meaningfully. "No, this is...." When he looked up from staring at his hands, his eyes were full of tears. "I talked to him after I kissed you for the first time, Rachel. I talked to him all night because I'd been so scared that I'd screw things up with you, and then you kissed me back."

Tears blurred her vision, now. "You were kissing me back in New York?" Rachel asked through a choked throat.

"You were my first girlfriend," Finn said in wonder. "Puck introduced us. He knew you from your Jewish church."

"Temple," Rachel automatically corrected, but her voice was strained with the need to laugh and cry and sing and do _something._ "So we probably lived by each other. That's how I knew which side of the city that station was on. This is...." Overcome, she flung her arms around Finn's shoulders and wondered just how amazing a life they'd left behind in New York and what they could do to get it back.

"I really remember, now," Finn said as he looked warily at the door where Kurt was still hidden and silent. "Not everything, but I remember being kids together. _And_ him flirting with me here. Oh man. I don't know if I can handle this, Rachel."

She pulled back and met his eyes. "I can't say it was innocent, and he did some very wrong things. But if I had to categorize his crush as anything, I'd call it, well... hero worship. Like he thought you would be there for him."

"I was," Finn said, and teared up anew. "I always was. Oh man. He was creeping me out and doing wrong stuff and... and he didn't even know that he was getting our parents _back together._ "

"It doesn't excuse his methods," Rachel said, "but maybe there was a subconscious motivation there. Look at us: we apparently dated before and now we're dating again. You didn't have any reason to look at me here, Finn. You had Quinn. But for whatever reason, you and I connected. We all must have been friends then if we all got powers together, but we didn't start off as a group here. But when we had the chance to join the same club, well, we took it."

That didn't seem to reassure him, and when he spoke she knew why. "What about when I laughed when he got thrown into a dumpster? What was my big plan there, huh?"

She didn't have an answer for that one. Focused on the distant New York past or the present where Finn Hudson was a boyfriend and brother, Rachel had forgotten about his worst behavior. "So which of you has the real name?" she asked as lightly as she could, hoping to move away from the topic.

Finn looked confused, but soon understood what she meant. "Oh. I guess you're right. We must have had the same last name. Was I Hummel?" he wondered but shook his head as soon as he'd asked it. "So he must have been... no. No, he wasn't Hudson. What the hell?" 

"Finn," Rachel began, but he immediately shushed her. She stayed quiet and didn't interrupt his flow of memories again.

"Was that even my name? No, I’m Finn Hu... Hu...." Finn’s forehead creased with what looked like physical pain. When he tried again, the word sounded awkward, as if he’d just come from a dentist’s office. "Hutton." The initial letters, the double consonant, the ending sound. It was as if someone had neatly split up their old identity and found new ones just close enough to fit without notice. "How could they do this?" Finn asked. "Who would do this to us? We used to talk about all the crap of... of _life_ until the middle of the night, and all of a sudden our parents aren’t married and I turned into a jerk who totally tortured him?"

"Maybe you should go talk to him now," Rachel gently suggested.

It was as if he'd forgotten that Kurt was just on the other side of the door, and Finn hurried to it and turned the knob. Though Kurt protested, Finn stayed right there in front of him. "I remember, man. I remember buying stuff for school, and going to Coney Island and us both getting sick." Kurt laughed wetly, nodded, and wiped at his eyes, and Finn grinned with relief and continued. "I remember when I was the first person you told about... you know."

"Yeah," Kurt agreed. His eyes were as red as she'd ever seen, and Rachel had a sudden flashback to watching him perform a song for a father who might be dying. He hadn't been smiling then, though. He was now. "Me too." He wiped at his cheek with the back of his hand. "And here I'd thought that having a car thrown at me would be the most dramatic part of my evening." He started laughing, tinged with an edge of hysteria, and Rachel began to think that they should really get some sleep.

"Are you going to tell them that you know?" she asked, gently prodding them toward their house.

After a surprised look between them, Finn and Kurt considered that and nodded in slow unison. "We have to," Finn said. "They have to tell us why they split up. I don't remember stuff about them yet, but there _has_ to be a reason."

"No reason good enough," Kurt said grimly, "but we're still owed the truth, even though it'll lead to some bad questions. We don't have to tell them about our powers, don't worry. We won't mention anyone else."

"Good luck," Rachel said and got up on her toes to kiss Finn. She hugged Kurt after that and they both winced as their bruises were jostled. "You have to let me know. You have to let all of us know, all right? Because what you're remembering... it must have happened to all of us. So if you two are the first to remember everything—"

"We will," Finn promised, but his attention turned quickly to Kurt. They swallowed hard as they smiled at each other and both looked constantly on the verge of tearing up again. "Hey."

"Hey," Kurt repeated shakily. When Finn slung an arm around his shoulder to guide them toward his parked truck, he let out a noise that was lost somewhere between laughter and crying. 

Her own eyes were wet, Rachel felt as she wiped at them. She carefully washed her face and worked out the kinks in her abused muscles before sliding into bed. What would they talk about on the drive home? What _had_ driven their parents to split up before they both moved to Lima, and why had they gotten together again? This was all so strange, and she was so tired that she knew her brain wasn't running at a capacity that could process everything. Determined to get that rest so she could wake up bright-eyed and ready to tackle the incredible questions ahead of them, Rachel turned on the television for company and waited for it to lull her to sleep.

She sat up a few seconds later. "Oh no," she said as she looked at her own face on television. "Oh no."

That mask really didn't hide much.

They'd been in Columbus, she thought dumbly as she watched video footage of the villains' destruction replayed and dissected. They'd taken precautions. They'd been hours away. That didn't mean anything in the digital world of 2011, though.

That mask hardly hid anything at all.

"Oh no," she repeated, and fumbled for her cell phone to turn it on.

Those were a lot of messages.

* * *

Into the dark spaces between worlds, where gods warred and psychic demons prowled the astral plane, knowledge of the group's powers filtered.

Something paid attention.

They told their friends.


	13. Parenthood

They'd moved to their apartment near Central Park when they were almost seven years old. The boys learned that it was expensive to move somewhere new, because you had to give money to the people who owned the building so that they would trust you to live there. There wasn't much of a birthday that year, but they didn't complain. Being so close to the park was a better gift than some plastic toy.

A year and a half later, Kurt thought numbly, his memories said he'd gone to a funeral in a small town in Ohio. Finn thought his dead father was sealed in an urn. "Finn?" he asked shakily. "I'm thinking of something right now, really hard. Can you look at it and see if it's real? I know it can't be, but I just want to make sure."

The sun had shone brightly that day. It gleamed on the polished surface of the coffin as it descended forever into the ground. 

Finn focused enough that his eyes regained a faint purple glow in the darkness, then shook his head. "It's fake. The whole funeral was fake."

Shock nearly made Kurt double over. He'd accepted that two pasts couldn't co-exist, but hearing the confirmation left him dizzy. The sadness of her death, the impact of her passing... and all this time it had never really happened? All this time Carole had been her, and _alive?_ "I can't handle this," Kurt said and leaned against the side of Finn's truck. His head felt ready to float away. "I can't."

Finn didn't always know the right thing to say; he usually didn't, really. Telepathy had to help, though, and he smiled as he gently touched Kurt's shoulder and asked, "Remember what happened after you talked me through my first dates with Rachel? Back there, I mean?"

Did he remember? He remembered finding a restaurant she'd like and suggesting it to Finn. He remembered hearing Finn's voice from the bottom bed as he talked nervously about being sure that she'd dump him after one date. (When Finn's legs proved to be on the gangly and clumsy side, the bottom bed was for his own protection.) He remembered being asked if there were any girls he liked, because maybe Finn could return the favor.

He remembered whispering something into their dark room and feeling terrified until he heard that it was okay.

"Yeah," Kurt said, nodding. He managed to smile. "Yeah, I do. Remember when we saw The Nutcracker for Christmas when we were little?"

Finn laughed. It sounded like it hurt. "I was so scared of the rats. I didn't know why anyone would want to see that."

"You started crying," Kurt agreed. "We had to go home early." 

Both boys trailed off, unable to do anything but look at each other in the dim light. Their lower lips trembled. Finn broke the stalemate when he lunged forward and wrapped Kurt in a firm hug. "I'm sorry, man."

"And I'm sorry," Kurt said against his shoulder. "I don't know what to... I can't... I have my brother back."

"Yeah," Finn said into his hair. "Let's go home."

It took them a few more clinging seconds before they stepped apart. The emotion had embarrassed both of them, and they laughed sheepishly as they peeled off their battered jackets and made do with the thin shirts underneath. Finn had on jeans, and Kurt wearing complicated pants wouldn't draw any notice, so they let that stand as good enough and climbed into the truck. Neither spoke for several blocks. "What do you think they were doing in New York?" Kurt wondered.

"I don't know," Finn said. "I can't remember. I still have all these big holes. I can't remember them or what school was like, but I can remember this really good ice cream shop around the corner."

Kurt nodded. Huge black voids still dotted his memory, like his life had been censored, but the little details were easier to retrieve. The bigger stuff would come eventually. Now that they'd breached the dam, he was sure of it. 

Halfway there, Kurt watched curiously as a media van did a U-turn in the middle of the street and headed the other direction. But his thoughts moved quickly past it as the upcoming confrontation sparked his nerves. "How are we going to do this? I mean, how are we going to start?"

"I could read their minds and try to figure out what to say," Finn said. "Or we could just go for broke. You know: we used to live in New York! What's up with that?"

Kurt started laughing. "At the end of this long day, that does have a certain appealing simplicity to it."

Finn glanced away from the windshield and grinned. "You wanna do it that way?"

"We shouldn't." Kurt met Finn's eyes and then gestured for him to look back to the road. "But let's."

Anticipation had them giddy by the time they parked and walked to the front door. They'd found another good reason for being late that night, so seeing lights on in the living room was a surprise. Kurt didn't think their parents would still be downstairs waiting for them. That was all right, though. It would streamline things. "Okay," he said. "Let's do this." 

Finn bumped his fist against Kurt's and then fumbled with his keys until the door swung open.

He hadn't turned the lock. Burt and Carole were waiting for them.

"We need to talk," Burt said grimly.

"Yes, well," Kurt said with as much self-possession as he could. Ruining their grand entrance had let a little air out of their plans. "We need to talk to you, too."

They stepped back and let the boys inside, and closed and locked the door behind them. Finn and Kurt exchanged a heartening glance and nodded at each other as they followed their parents to wherever they were going, but froze as they rounded the corner. That was them on television. There was no hiding it, no trying to deny it. Not when the tall boy who looked like Finn in a tiny mask was kissing the girl who looked like Rachel in a tiny mask, or when Blaine was there without any mask at all.

"Is this what you've been doing all these nights you've been out with your friends?" Carole asked levelly. Burt looked at Kurt's pants, then back to the television where a reporter was discussing these new heroes, and his mouth thinned.

"Uh." Finn glanced at Kurt and grimaced. _We kinda screwed up our plan, dude._ But he took a deep breath and said, "Yeah. Yeah, that's us. We're superheroes. And we saved some lives tonight, so don't try to tell us it wasn't a good thing."

"When the hell did this start?" Burt asked. "How long have you been lying to us?"

Whenever Burt used that tone, Kurt wanted to follow orders without question. It took him a few words to break the habit. "Ever since the last day of... wait. Wait." He planted his feet firmly and demanded, "How long have you been lying to _us?_ "

"Hey!" Burt said. His temper had sparked. Kurt could seldom stand up to that fire in his eyes, but on that night he managed to meet his father glare for glare. "Don't try to change the subject on me, Kurt. This is not a joke. We are going to sit you down and find out exactly what the hell you two think you've been doing—"

"Ever since we moved from New York?" Kurt asked and Burt faltered.

"What?" Carole asked. 

Finn stepped in. "Don't lie, Mom. We know we used to live in New York. On 93rd. Remember?" He ignored the way Burt and Carole looked warily at each other and pressed on. "We know, okay? And all that stuff on the TV? Well, yeah. It's true. And I can read minds, so I _know_ that when Kurt remembered living there, it really happened."

He hesitated, perhaps to give them a chance to speak up, but they didn't. They didn't seem to know what to say. Finn continued, "And we know that we had our memories ripped away, and we were turned into different people... but we're really brothers."

"Why?" Kurt pleaded when their parents remained silent. "Dad, why did you split us up?"

"Burt, they said this wouldn't happen," Carole muttered.

"'They?'" Finn repeated. "Who's 'they?' What's going on? Why have you lied to us?"

"We can explain," Burt said soothingly. He held up his hands and smiled. "Just sit down, all right, guys? We can explain."

"No, you can't," Finn said. "I can feel it rolling off you guys. You're totally panicked." He took a step closer to Kurt, so that they formed a unified front against the two adults. "Why did you lie to us about New York?" he added more forcefully. "What have you been hiding?"

"Come on, guys," Burt said with a grin like he was talking down an angry dog. "Let's go sit down and Carole can grab you something to drink, okay? Let's just keep this all nice and calm."

"Keep _what_ nice and calm?" Finn said and glowered at Burt until his eyes gleamed. Burt and Carole gasped at that first visible signs of their powers, but Finn gasped louder when he staggered back a step and latched onto Kurt's arm for balance. _They were never in New York with us._

Kurt stared at Finn. _What?_

Seeming to realize what was happening, Burt and Carole stepped forward. Finn, panicked, held out his hands and a wall of telekinetic force drove them back. "No, Finn, please!" Carole shouted. "Oh god. Please let us through, this is important!"

"What did Mom and Dad look like?" Finn asked Kurt desperately.

"I don't..." It was hard to remember. He'd never really tried, and they'd had such a short time with their new memories. Kurt could remember ball games on the television and being tucked in at night when he was a child. Carole had flat brown hair, then, like she'd used to before he'd taught her about highlights. Burt _had_ hair, and it was surprisingly coppery and must have given Kurt the undertones that showed up in the sun.

But in his memory, Burt had dark eyes.

Carole had the light ones.

As the implications struck, Kurt's assumptions of who had been in that apartment with them crumbled. The vaguely remembered faces stopped looking like the two people standing there that night. "You're not our parents," Kurt whispered.

Finn's shield fell, likely from exhaustion, but neither adult dared to take a step forward. "We are," Burt said. "We are absolutely your parents, guys. Come on. Think about what you're saying."

As he fought back tears, Finn stared at Carole and said, "You're picturing where you used to live. You used to live in Virginia. You told me you've always lived in Ohio." 

"How long has this been going on?" Kurt asked. His hands shook.

"We promise we are your parents," Carole said desperately. "We are. We will be for the rest of your lives, and we love you both."

That wasn't what he'd asked. "And how long have you been our parents?" Kurt asked. 

Her mouth worked silently before Carole admitted, "For about two years, now." Finn let out a strangled moan and backed toward the door. "Finn!" she cried and grabbed for him. He jerked his hands away, but when she held on more tightly he let her do it. His expression said that his mother was holding him and he'd never throw her free. He'd never lay a hand on her, even if she was actually a stranger who'd been lying to him for all of his remembered life.

"Kurt, son, please just listen to us," Burt began. He took a step forward.

As soon as those hands were on him, Kurt knew he'd be just as helpless. Those were arms he associated with comfort and strength and everything good in the world, and he refused to be lied to again. When Burt took another step forward, Kurt vanished from their vision.

Burt and Carole looked wildly around as Kurt edged toward the front door. He heard Finn's voice pleading for him not to run off and leave Finn alone, but he couldn't stay. He couldn't look at Burt Hummel's face and wonder who the hell he was. Knowing these would be the risky few seconds, Kurt flung the door open and darted into the night before they could lunge to stop his invisible body.

He ran. He couldn't go back into the house for his keys, so it had to be by foot. Kurt's boots pounded relentlessly down the sidewalk. Every step jostled his injuries from the fight, but when he started crying it wasn't from pain. When he'd faced that week with Burt in the hospital, he had felt completely and utterly alone in the world. He didn't know if he'd have a home to come back to or any family that would care about him. Then, in the space of one evening, he'd gained a blood brother and discovered that he'd never been looking at his real father in that hospital bed.

Fire soon shot through him. His fight-drained reserves were nearly gone and he couldn't push any harder. Kurt gave up and slowed to a walk, pressing hard on the stitch in his side, and resisted the urge to scream. Why? Why had this happened to him? He knew that New York was where he wanted to be. He hadn't been so alone there, unlike almost all his memories of Lima. Why had he lost some perfect life and been imprisoned in one that tried to beat him down until he couldn't stand back up?

Kurt drew back his foot and kicked a stray can hard. It went shooting across the road, rebounded off a tree, and rolled back across the middle line. That can was still moving gently when Burt's truck approached. He slowed to study it in his headlights, and then leaned his head out to call, "Kurt?" He put the truck in park and stepped out to survey the night around him. When he looked straight at Kurt it almost felt like he lingered, but then he continued past his invisible son.

Kurt didn't answer. Burt eventually drove on and Kurt cut across a lawn in the opposite direction. By the time the rottweiler in the first yard realized he was there, he was already flipping over the next fence.

* * *

Judy Fabray hadn't said anything for at least a minute. Quinn watched the microwave clock change twice. "Do you have an explanation for this, Quinn?" she finally asked.

Did she have an explanation? No. Quinn didn't feel like she had an explanation for much of anything, anymore. All her life she'd heard that she just needed to meet all these rules that someone else had laid out, and then people would like her. She'd changed herself. She'd worked. She'd fought down everything about herself that others called wrong.

But the second you took one false step, Quinn thought darkly, people loved to point it out. She was tired of it. She was tired of almost everything.

"My daughter is throwing herself around a war zone, dressed like a prostitute—"

"No, Mom," Quinn said. "You don't get to say those things any more. You don't get to make sex sound like the worst thing in the world when Dad cast his own daughter aside. You don't get to tell my hair looks terrible because I'm not a little Barbie you can play with any more." Her palms slammed against the table. "And you don't get to tell me that I should be ashamed of saving people's lives when you would have loved for me to rip girls' lives apart to win prom queen!"

"Don't take that tone with me," Judy said, but she seemed taken aback by the fervor in Quinn's voice.

"My costume looks great," Quinn added. "Kurt worked really hard on it. So did Tina and Mercedes. So did I. Remember when she came over? We made plans. We worked on them right here."

Judy opened her mouth, took a deep breath, and closed it without saying anything more. She calmed herself before she continued. "I don't think you know how hard this is for me, Quinn."

"Hard for you?" Quinn asked with a bitter laugh. "I'm sorry, were you the one who had to keep finding a new place to live because you made one mistake? Or were you the woman who watched her own daughter get thrown out of the house and didn't say one word to help her?"

"Your father was a difficult man to live with, Quinn. You know that."

"Yes I do," Quinn said. "I really do." She stood without being excused. "Whatever. I'm tired after throwing myself around a war zone, and this prostitute really wants to get some sleep."

"Quinn, please, I'm just upset." Judy took a deep breath. "Let's figure out what to do with this, all right?"

"Because your advice has worked out for well for me before?" Quinn asked. When Judy didn't answer, she walked to her room without saying anything more.

* * *

"Go up to your room, Mike."

Mike's jaw worked, but he couldn't find anything to say. His mother wouldn't meet his eyes. His father....

He wasn't going to pay for school. He wasn't going to let Mike see his friends again. He was going to rip out everything in Mike's room except a bare mattress and a blank desk, and lock him in there to do his homework and think very carefully on the choices he had made with his life. Mike could see all of those threats in his face, because Mike had done something _terribly_ wrong.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm really sorry."

"Please just go upstairs," they both said and he had to blink back tears. They looked like they were deciding which execution method to use on him. He knew they'd be mad if they ever found out what he'd been doing, but he hadn't been prepared for a reaction like this. Nothing like this.

"Okay," he said quietly and walked upstairs. His legs were numb. He didn't feel the steps. When he closed his bedroom door behind him, it was difficult to hold the knob.

* * *

"Do you have an explanation for this?"

Santana stared hopelessly at the news. That was her. There was no way to pretend any differently. That was her, and she was making out with Brittany. She wanted to throw up and scream and break things and apologize and shout Brittany's name to the heavens and just _vanish._ "I. That's."

"Give us your phone," her father said and Santana handed it over without protest. Their faces were blank and their voices level. She had to cooperate, she thought with terror that weakened her knees. If she did what they wanted, then maybe she wouldn't make things any worse. Angering them further would be the worst thing she could do.

_Not the worst thing_ , her brain laughed at her and Santana almost started crying.

"Everyone knows, now," said her father. "Do you know how many calls I've gotten?"

Her head fell. Hair covered her face like a curtain. "I'm sorry." If she could just turn back time and not do this... maybe Brittany actually could turn back time. Maybe they could fix this. There had to be a way to fix this, right?

"Go upstairs." 

By the time she hit the fourth step, Santana knew she was going to throw up. She bolted for the hallway bathroom and flung the toilet lid open. It wasn't fast enough, and the first thin splash of bile didn't hit water. More came as she clung desperately to the bowl, like it was an anchor as everything in her life fell inevitably and completely apart. Her hair slipped back in front of her and got wet.

Santana threw up until her abdominal muscles threatened to cramp and fell asleep beside the toilet with the taste of vomit still in her mouth. Eventually soft hands woke her up and she blinked at her mother's face. Exhaustion had left her too hollow to feel any more terror about her fate. "Go to bed, pequeña."

"Mom, I...."

"Go to bed." A damp washcloth wiped down Santana's face and the dirty locks of hair. "We'll talk in the morning."

* * *

What conversation would they have had, Kurt wondered as he walked down the empty street, if he and Finn hadn't been able to challenge the lies about their past? Without that knowledge, what was everyone else facing? Surely everyone had seen how they'd been on the news, but they had no idea they'd lived in New York. Their parents would only talk to them about the heroics in Columbus. No one but him, Finn, and Rachel yet knew the truth.

A street light flickered above him. It went out, struggled, and faded for good. Kurt looked at it for a while before moving on. In the emptiness it felt like the world dying around him, as if everything had ended for them that night. But then, he thought as he slipped through shadows, it had.

Their world was over. This was post-apocalyptic Lima.

A car rounded a far corner and Kurt went invisible again. He was beyond tired by that point and his head pounded with the effort. He couldn't risk pushing himself too much further and needed to get off the streets. In a daze, he looked around for the nearest street sign and managed to orient himself within the city. There weren't any truly safe refuges. His face was on television, and so he couldn't try to make it to someone's house. Blaine's parents would know. So would Lauren's or Sam's. 

When he realized that he was actually considering trying to make it to Sue Sylvester's house to cry for amnesty like Esmeralda, Kurt forced himself to walk toward one location that he knew was nearby. It wouldn't have people in it, no one would expect him to be there, and it had some memories he wanted to confront. He crossed onto the cemetery's property, dropped his invisibility, and let the night be his only cover.

They'd made the trip twice a year ever since he was eight: Mother's Day and her birthday. (No, they hadn't. Those memories were lies.) It was different finding her in the dark, and Kurt's feet were slow and clumsy by that point. A long time passed before he was looking at a name that meant everything to him and nothing. He didn't know what he was doing there, but he didn't have anywhere else to go. Kurt slowly sat down in front of someone's grave, bowed his head, and wondered what he was supposed to do next.

All things considered, it was fortunate that Burt was the one to discover him asleep, still half-dressed in his hero's outfit. "Kurt," he said quietly as he laid his hand on Kurt's shoulder.

Kurt bolted to his feet, nearly falling over in the process, and backed away from Burt. "How did you find me?" Had Finn sold him out? Scanned the town, pointed where they should go?

"Didn't think you'd be going to anyone's house, what with the news," Burt said. "And I guess I just hoped you couldn't stay out of sight forever. I thought about places that wouldn't have people there at this time of night, and you weren't anywhere at school that I checked. So... I thought I'd try here." His voice took on a hopeful tone. "Says something that I figured it out, huh? That I knew where you'd go?"

"No."

Burt flinched at the short word.

"Who is she?" Kurt asked as he leaned on the headstone with his mother's... what he'd _thought_ was his mother's name. Burt didn't immediately reply, and so he snarled, "Who is she? Whose marker did you erase so you could lie to me? Who else's past did you steal?"

"It's empty," Burt said. "There's no one." The enormity of his words staggered Kurt and he nearly wobbled where he stood. Kurt turned to run again and Burt cried with agony, "Please, son, wait!"

"Don't call me that," Kurt said tearfully. But there was something in that familiar voice that kept him there, and he stayed still as Burt slowly approached him and laid a hand on his shoulder. He knew that hand. It had felt smaller as the years went by and he'd grown to fill it... but then, he hadn't, had he? All of the memories he had of Burt Hummel were false. He'd never pointed out his carefully-wrapped gifts under the Christmas tree, or laughed when their ambition for a family dinner outstripped their skills. 

"You," Burt said fiercely, "are my son. Okay?"

He had memories of watching his mother die. Kurt could picture the day when he learned what 'gay' meant and instantly knew that he couldn't ever tell his father. Years and years of aching, crushing loneliness, and for what purpose? He could have had any false memories jammed into his head, and someone thought he needed to have _those?_ "So what's your real name?" he asked coldly. 

Burt flinched at his tone. "Just what I've always said."

Oh, sure. Their names made sense when he'd supposedly been named for his father, but expecting him to believe it now was absurd. "Really." Kurt smiled thinly. He could see the hurt in his father's... in _Burt's_ eyes. Good. This stranger had been lying to him for years. He'd had Kurt weeping at his hospital bedside, and for what purpose? He wasn't his father and Kurt might already be orphaned. 

"Yes. Really." Burt swallowed again and managed to say, "When I heard your name, I guess I sort of... took it as a sign."

"And when did you hear my name?" Kurt asked. He took a step back, out of the reach of Burt's arm. Burt tensed, probably worried that Kurt would run again, and then let his hand fall when Kurt remained distant but didn't flee. "Was it on my cage when you picked me up from the pet store?"

"It wasn't like that, Kurt," Burt insisted. "Please, believe me."

"Why should I?" Kurt asked with a glance toward the empty grave at his feet.

"Because nothing I've done...." Burt bowed his head, sighed, and shook it before looking back up. With apology in his voice, he amended, "Hardly anything I've done for the past two years has been a lie. The conversations we had, when you trusted me enough to tell me things about yourself... that was me, buddy. All me. And I was glad to be there for it."

"Why should I believe you?" Kurt repeated.

"Because all this time I've been trying to save your life," Burt said bluntly, apparently unable to think of any more diplomatic approach. "You kids are here because your lives were—maybe are—in danger. Carole and I didn't know that you and Finn were both the same way until I was almost ready to propose. It was that big a deal. We held back that much, and we did it to keep you safe."

"So what happened to my real parents?" Kurt asked.

"I'm sorry, Kurt, but—"

They really were dead, then. When he remembered them, that would hurt. "How?"

"I don't know. There's a lot that they didn't share."

"Who?" Kurt asked. "Who was making these decisions about my life? Our lives?"

Burt took a deep breath and told him.

* * *

Austin was too goddamn hot.

Burt had worked at the Stark Industries fabrication plant in Detroit for years when a change in corporate direction was announced. Facilities needed to be overhauled. Rather than drawing a reduced salary for eighteen months while he got part-time hours, he took a temporary transfer to the Austin R&D center. He'd been involved in engineering up in Michigan, and so the idea of just designing things all day was kind of exciting. 

He'd come there with a plan. Tony Stark had his problems as the big boss man way, way upstairs, but he encouraged innovation among his workers. Employees got to keep a percentage of all profits made off any patent filed. That percentage was tiny, but given how expensive Stark's goods were, well... just one or two good discoveries and Burt would be able to give his wife a better life than he'd ever dreamed. Then they'd head back to Detroit and her family and they'd be set for their entire future together. Burt had just overlooked one flaw in his plan: Austin was really too goddamned hot.

"An air conditioner?" his boss asked that day when he came back from lunch.

Burt laughed sheepishly. "Small air conditioner, sized for an individual storage unit or something. Hardly needs any power supply and it goes to sixty below." He saw the amusement and added, "Look, July here makes me want to kill someone. Or myself. So I went a little nuts with turning down the heat."

"It might have some potential," his boss admitted. "I'm not seeing many immediate applications that a cheaper or less powerful unit isn't covering already, but you never know. Good work, Hummel. I'll get the paperwork filed."

It was hard to hold back his fistpump until he was alone again. Maybe this wouldn't be his big break, but he'd just come up with something that was all his. It was a chance, at least, and so he brought home champagne that night. "Hey," he said as he kissed Melissa. "Big news. Well, a shot at big news, anyway." 

It turned out to be very big news. Burt didn't get a check for the patent sale, because his boss was right: no one would pay for a tiny cooling unit that went far colder than most people needed and cost so much that its energy savings would never pay for the sticker price. No one, that was, except for one of the richest men on the planet who flew around every day in a blazing hot metal suit that was powered by giant jets of flame.

Tony Stark signed the check himself. It was a special circumstance, his note explained. Legally he could have simply seized Burt's design, since he'd done it for his company, but he'd stumbled into solving a problem that had left Mr. Stark sweaty no matter how many solutions he tried. Since he _hated_ being sweaty with no fun cause behind it, a quarter million dollars seemed like a fair reward.

"We could buy a friggin' mansion with this back home," Burt said in wonder as he sat at their kitchen table and stared at the check.

"You have to go deposit it tomorrow morning," Melissa said insistently. "Promise me you will, Burt? And don't use the ATM. Go inside. You have to—"

"I'll go inside," Burt laughed. He'd done it. This would pay for a home, colleges, the start of a really decent retirement fund... he'd done it. They could finally look at having kids. Yeah, they were starting late, but if they really ran into problems they had doctors for that. And he had the money to pay for it, Burt added to himself with a cheeky grin.

The next day he looked up how much those doctors cost, just in case. It was expensive to have a baby put together for you in a petri dish, and they couldn't even promise that it would work right the first time. Burt frowned. Well, he still had another eleven months in Austin. If he figured out a commercial patent that really took off, they wouldn't have to worry about anything. And then they wouldn't just have the core of a retirement fund, they'd be safe and sound forever.

Eleven months later, Melissa wasn't pregnant and Burt was on the verge of something big at work, he just knew it. "I can take a six month extension," he said. "And then we'll move right back up." He saw her protest building. Melissa hadn't wanted to move down there in the first place. Family was important to her, she hated leaving hers behind, and she thought they were comfortable enough to start trying for babies right away. He thought they needed to have every plan covered before they started, and she thought they could muddle through as they went. 

Burt got his way again and they stayed for another six months.

If he stayed through the end of the fiscal year then there was an excellent chance he'd be a full manager back up in Detroit. Melissa looked ready to argue again, but what he was saying made _sense_ , and he was going to give her the life she deserved. He told her that time and time again until she gave up and nodded.

With two weeks to go, Burt landed on an improvement in braking efficiency that would impact producers and consumers alike. This time his boss didn't try to tell him that no one would be interested, because they both knew that Burt Hummel was going to have some fat checks coming in for at least the next ten years. When Burt rushed home with a copy of the patent paperwork in hand, it felt like that stack of sheets was another check signed by Tony Stark.

A letter waited for him on the table. _You're trying to give me the life you say I deserve,_ Melissa had written. _But I can tell you stopped caring about the life I actually wanted a long time ago._

Calling her mother in Michigan did no good. He thought they were fine, but for months she'd been drifting away. Now she was gone. Burt thought he was providing for his future family, like a good husband and father. The divorce papers came by courier three days later.

He took a position in the Chicago office instead, and two years passed.

"Can I help you?" he asked the man walking into his office without an appointment. An _appointment._ He hated his job. Burt Hummel was supposed to be working with his hands like he'd done in Detroit and Austin, not contacting materials suppliers in a seventh-floor Chicago office. His necktie felt like it was strangling him.

"Mr. Hummel?" the man asked, extending his hand. He looked like a decent guy and so Burt shook it. "I'm Leroy Epson. I work for S.H.I.E.L.D."

"I know them, yeah," Burt said. He worked for one of the top technology and engineering firms in the world, of course he knew all the biggest government buyers.

"When you invented the technology for which Mr. Stark rewarded you, he conducted a higher-level security sweep on your background. He wanted to make sure that you weren't planted in his firm to create something that would blow up on him in the middle of a mission."

"Huh," Burt said shortly. Well, that was... weird. Who knew Iron Man was so paranoid?

"And so you are very valuable to us right now," Leroy continued, "because S.H.I.E.L.D. is faced with an emergency situation. We don't have agents to spare for this work, but we desperately need people who have already passed a high-level clearance check."

"What's the deal?" Burt asked. A frown carved deep lines across his face. He knew he worked for a company that dealt with many important issues, but he'd never faced them himself. Working in back rooms and finding his perfect tools had always been his role of choice. 

"This is a class 7-R situation," Leroy said.

Burt drew back. He knew that code. That meant 'this project is so top-secret and has so many government fingers in the pie that breathing one word of it will land you in prison.' It made no logical sense to keep talking to this guy; what did he care about working with S.H.I.E.L.D.? He had paperwork to fill out. Ah, he realized. That's why he was still listening: because this might be something exciting in a day full of drudgery. "Got it."

"I'll take that as full legal acknowledgment," Leroy said and clicked something in his pocket. "We have a group of teenagers who are in serious danger. They developed into metahumans during exposure at a government facility, and if certain parties get ahold of them... they're dead." He let that sink into Burt's mind and then added, "There is also a non-negligible probability that the majority of the northern hemisphere would be phased into another dimension, killing the entire population of the planet."

It took a lot to make him choke on his own spit, Burt thought as he finished coughing. He grabbed for a bottle of water and managed to get himself far enough under control to ask, "What the hell do you want from me, then? Isn't this what you guys handle?"

Leroy's expression softened. "Those kids just lost all their parents, Mr. Hummel, their powers have been suppressed, and someone at Xavier's just finished ripping out their memories. They don't even have those any more, just so they can be kept out of sight. When they rebuild, they're going to need safe homes."

After the implications struck, Burt laughed. "What, you come in here without an appointment and ask me to _adopt_ someone? Get the hell out, send in someone who's got a serious question for me."

"My partner and I are adopting one of them," he said. "She was the child of two gay men in New York. I don't wholly understand the rationale, but they're trying to mimic some aspects of their life there." He nodded when Burt looked surprised, and not just because he never would have guessed that this normal-looking guy would have a 'partner.' "That's right. I am walking the walk, here. We're even going to change our name to match hers."

Burt couldn't think of what to say. This was _stupid_ , but talking to a man who was adopting a child to keep her safe was very different from being lectured to by an overreaching government employee. So he stayed quiet and listened to whatever Epson had to say next. 

"You're a good enough match for the father of... one of the boys," he said with a strange hesitation in the middle. "This match was made specific to you. If you turn us down, we'll just be on our way to find some other option for him. They're currently being held in psychic stasis until new memories can be constructed. It won't hold forever, but...."

His head swam. Burt rubbed the bridge of his nose and held out his hand. Even discussing this was ridiculous, but he wasn't just going to turn some kid with a death sentence on his head over to whoever S.H.I.E.L.D. dug up as a last-minute option. After opening the file, he looked between the dossier and Leroy's face a few times before chuckling and asking, "So what's his real name?"

"Kurt," Leroy said with a smile. "I thought you'd like that. No, really. It is. He'd change to your last name, though. It's complicated that some are changing over and some aren't, I know, but we do have all of this handled." For a while there was silence as Burt flipped through papers, and Leroy eventually risked saying, "He'll turn sixteen soon. It has been two years since your divorce, and I understand that a central issue was wanting to settle down with a family. It might not be how you pictured, but this would give you a second chance."

Too far, too fast. Way too far. Burt smiled tightly, without humor, and shoved the file back at him. "Nice talking with you, Epson. Good luck with your kid."

His shoulders slumped and he accepted the file. "My apologies. We'll find someone else for Kurt, then. Some of the other children have already been rejected twice, so we are prepared for this sort of thing."

Wait. That wasn't right. They were in fear for their lives, and they'd already been kicked away from some hope at safety _twice?_ Shit. "Give me the file again," Burt grumbled and extended his hand.

The kid looked like he could be related to him. The eyes were pretty spot-on, and the roundness of Burt's nose had been smoothed and refined. He was scrawny, though. He was supposed to be almost sixteen? He looked thirteen. "He's so little," Burt said despite himself and felt a surge of protectiveness swell.

Oh, damn.

"What happened to his folks?" Burt asked. "I mean, their folks. All of the kids."

"That's even more classified, I'm afraid. But it wasn't pretty." Leroy frowned, shook his head, and added, "It's what the kids are faced with, too. Don't worry, though. You'd hold no interest for them, we're pretty sure. You wouldn't be at risk."

That was good, Burt supposed, although it would be a hell of a lot more fair if someone like him could face down that threat instead. "How do you know that the families you're grabbing will care about these kids?" Burt asked. If some of them were already on strike three, and the only thing S.H.I.E.L.D. cared about was that the parents had passed security checks....

"We don't," Leroy admitted. "We don't have time for that level of screening. Psychic stasis can hollow people out pretty quickly. All we can do is put them somewhere where they'll be safe. Being loved will be an additional benefit, we hope." He allowed Burt to look at the picture a while longer before adding, "There's something additional the psychic at Xavier's says she can do. The type of energy that their parents were working with... it left imprints of their minds hanging in the air as they died. She was able to grab them."

Burt didn't like the sound of that. A psychic grabbing memories from beyond the grave was into midnight movie territory. "And?" he asked warily.

"We're offering the chance to have appropriate memories implanted, if they're still there. Not many. But... look, we know this is going to be hard. Adoptive parents seek out a child in an orderly fashion, they don't have someone spring on them like I'm doing. This _is_ sudden and I apologize. Three days from now you could be in a new house in a new town with a new job."

"What job?" Burt asked. He had the unpleasant feeling that at some point, he'd agreed to this.

Leroy smiled and pulled out a file. Burt saw his name on it. "We have your aptitude tests here, as well as your stated career goals from your annual evaluations. You are not fond of this office, that much is very clear." He chuckled at the annoyed reaction Burt couldn't quite hold back. "You'd draw a small stipend from S.H.I.E.L.D., and of course you will continue to receive all the patent royalty checks for what you've done for Stark. Other than that, you'll be expected to provide for yourself and your family. We have some options that you'll like. Given your previous work, I'm sure you'll be very comfortable."

No. This was crazy. There was no way he'd do it. Just because Burt was facing a life he hated, no hope of romance, and so no normal family, and some kid was facing death.... "What memories would I get?" he asked softly.

"It varies from person to person. But big ones, generally. Things like bringing him home from the hospital."

"I'd think I actually did it?" Burt asked as his fingertips traced circles around the photo in front of him.

"No. You'd know some other man was holding his child. But at the same time, you'd feel like he should be yours." Leroy's head tilted a bit as he watched Burt's silent contemplation of the picture, and he gently added, "Worst case scenario, Burt—may I call you Burt? If this doesn't work out, it's not long before he's eighteen. Technically you'd sign up for the long haul, but I'm sure we both know plenty of people who looked at that eighteenth birthday like a finish line for the real work."

"I'd never do that," Burt said. 

"Neither would I," Leroy said and they shared a smile. 

Burt looked down at the file and choked back something that might have been a laugh when he read the kid's name again. That had to mean something, right? It had to.

"I have the paperwork in my bag," Leroy said gently, "if you want to sign."

His hand stole across the table and fumbled for what he knew was there. Burt held up a hundred-dollar fountain pen with a flourish. It was a gift on his first anniversary at the Chicago office, so he could sign many more supply contracts for projects he didn't care about. "Let's do this."

* * *

Kurt didn't say anything for a long time.

"So maybe I'm not the guy you thought I was," Burt said and risked taking a step closer. "But I am a guy who wanted to be your dad. I still do, and I always will."

"You've been lying to me."

Burt didn't argue. "It was to keep you safe. I don't know who's out there, but I know it's my job to stand between them and you. And," he risked adding with another careful step, "it's my job to talk to you when you have hard days, and make sure you have a big future ahead of you. Someday, I guess I hope I'll get to be a good granddad, too. You know, if that's what you want, and if you let me."

"How do I know that you're telling the truth now?"

"Because we can drive straight home," Burt said, "and have Finn read me. I'll tell the whole story again if you want, so you can see what he says. Please, Kurt. Get in and let me drive you home." 

"Home? Won't it be a long drive to New York, though?" Kurt asked. Though Burt tensed at his tight tone, Kurt relented, nodded, and let himself be led to the truck. His hand rested on the handle but didn't open it, and Burt came around to see what was wrong.

"Finn's really my brother," Kurt said as the realization struck him anew. "All my life, he has been."

"Yeah," Burt said with a lopsided smile. "Who'd've figured, huh?"

Everything was starting to rush in. His defenses were down. "My real parents are dead."

Burt flinched at 'real,' but he nodded.

"I don't even remember their names. I'm on the news. Something wants to kill me." It was hard to breathe. "I never went to my mom's funeral here, and everything in Lima is a lie. And... and...." His words stalled inside his chest. Soft choking noises escaped as his final mental wall fell and Kurt flashed back to seeing a car fly at him. "And I almost died tonight." Tears spilled. When Burt pulled him into a hug, Kurt let him.

"Come on," Burt said when his shirt was soaked and Kurt had cried out the worst of his fears over everything. "Let's go home."


	14. Revelations

Finn sat very quietly as he looked at Carole. Her mind was filled with mom stuff: grocery lists, work schedules, concern about the monthly budget. Strange cracks surrounded those thoughts and memories, and when he pushed on them they fell apart like glass. Someone had shielded her mind. That anonymous telepath had talent; Finn had delved deep into her memories before and he'd never noticed the block.

Carole didn't fight it. They seemed to be past that point. "So that's how it happened," she said quietly as Finn saw her real life.

She'd been in a medical and logistical crew for S.H.I.E.L.D., whoever that was. Their small, mostly unarmored team would go into the harshest environments on earth to retrieve and support top-tier special agents. She'd been good. She liked her job. Then someone's predictions were off by two minutes, and their helicopter was hit by rockets that should have been taken out.

There had been seven of them that day. Four of them became bloody corpses around Carole, and a fifth was headed that way. Her own vision was going black. Something warm spilled out onto her chest until the last member of the crew slammed his hand down and applied life-saving pressure to her gaping wound.

The damage was worse than that single bleeder. It took her nearly a year in recovery and twice that in physical therapy until she regained full use of her limbs. She couldn't stand hearing sudden loud noises, and she found other things to look at when a special effects spectacular on TV had explosions. For more than four years, Carole took whatever domestic appointment was available for someone with her skills. She could no longer face the international appointments that had been the foundation of her career. 

One of those corpses in the helicopter had landed on her. Her pressure-applying savior had to throw the corpse free. Before he'd turned into a charred, broken mess, Craig had been her husband.

She didn't get a personal visit asking her to join the program with the at-risk children. She didn't need one. When Carole was offered the chance to once again make a difference, and in a quiet town, she took it gladly. "So that's how I got you," she said.

Finn stared at where her hands rested on her knees. He couldn't dig into his own mind, but he could see that these memories were real just as surely as he knew Kurt's were. Carole had lied to him all every day she'd known him, and she'd been a stranger who took Finn in immediately after some other stranger crammed his brain full of fiction. He should be furious. Maybe he should have run away like Kurt.

The difference for Finn, though, was that he could feel exactly how deeply and truly Carole loved him. There was no faking that.

"Am I still supposed to call you Mom?" he asked in confusion.

Her breath hitched, but she managed to smile. "I'd really like it if you did. I am your mother. You know that, right? Maybe I didn't start off that way, but I will be forever."

"Is Hudson your real name?"

"No. No, it was Napier." She shrugged helplessly. "They said they needed something 'close,' whatever that means. Burt's name already worked, apparently. He didn't have to change."

"That makes sense," Finn said. "Our real last name is Hutton. Hummel's close enough. Hudson's kind of... spooky close."

An odd sense of unreality filled the room. There they were, after Finn had just learned that his mom wasn't his mom and his family was nothing like he'd thought, and they were having a pleasant conversation. He was still on the news. If Mercedes' shields had failed, he would have died. It was really amazing, Finn thought as he compared himself with the heartbroken face Kurt had made just before he vanished, what a difference it made to feel exactly how much someone loved you. "How much do you know about what they did to us?" Finn finally asked.

"Not that much," she admitted. "More than most, though, since I used to be an agent. I know they were worried about keeping your memories locked away. That's why they tried to make families similar to what you'd lost. Apparently living in a new state wouldn't jostle your memories, but hearing the wrong name every day would." Carole shrugged. "I don't totally understand it."

"The little stuff came back to me before the big stuff," Finn theorized. "Little stuff's important."

"That's why they kept some of you apart," Carole added sadly. "Just being around people every day, repeating how you acted around them... they thought it could remind you too much of New York." She dug out her phone when it rang and sighed in relief after answering it. "Okay, Burt. We'll see you soon. I'm glad you found him. Is he all right? Great. Bye." She hung up. "They're coming home."

That was good. Kurt shouldn't have run off alone like that. "What's going to happen to us now?"

"I don't know," Carole said. "It sounds like they're going to have to meet with everyone. They might need to do more fake memories."

Finn flinched.

"Burt and I are married," she said. "We'll refuse to split up if they ask us to."

"Would I start being mean to him again?" He hated being a pawn like this, but it didn't sound like he had much of a choice. He could give up his powers if it kept him safe, as he'd never know they were gone. But he couldn't turn back into who he'd been. He just couldn't. 

"I don't know," Carole said helplessly. "Probably not, if you're still in the same family. I'm sorry, Finn. I really don't have much leverage here. I'd stop them if I could." She scooted forward and took his hand in hers. "It might not happen. After two years of safety, they might figure that you're off the radar by now."

That was more reassuring than it should have been, considering their television debut. Their house seemed like a stage set. Their family _felt_ real, but they'd been reading lines for years. He and Carole didn't recite any more dialog. They sat in silence, loosely clasping the other's hand, until a key turned and the front door opened. Burt looked tired and Kurt looked dead on his feet, but they were both whole and healthy. "Got everything straightened out," Burt said as he guided Kurt inside and closed the door behind them. He kept his hand on Kurt's shoulder as he typed in a code to activate their security system again. "As much as we could, anyway."

Kurt was so broken, Finn felt as he touched the boy's mind. A quick survey of Burt's turned up the same intense love that Carole felt. If they each had more affection for the boy they'd started with, they still felt it for the other with a strength no one could fault. "They love us," Finn said. Kurt's huge, teary eyes met his uncertainly. "They just... trust me. I wish you could feel it. They _love_ us."

Turning, Kurt looked at Burt, who nodded back with a wavering smile. "Okay," he said and that seemed to be that. "I really want to go take a shower. It's been a long day."

"Yeah," Burt said. He swallowed. "It has. Go up, take your shower, and get some sleep. You guys might need to stick around the house for a while, okay?" They both nodded. "We'll talk more tomorrow, then."

Perhaps Finn should have stayed downstairs to listen in on their conversation, but it had been a long day for him, too. He followed Kurt upstairs and into his room. "Hey. You kinda took off and left me on my own."

"Sorry," Kurt said with a hiss as he carefully moved his arms across their full range of motion. "I think I'd left the driver's seat."

"How bad is it?" Finn wondered.

Hesitating, Kurt peeled off his thin t-shirt and revealed the rapidly bruising skin underneath. It looked like... well, like he'd gotten into an argument with two cars and nearly lost. "I'm going to take some ibuprofen," he said as he rummaged for pajamas. "A lot of it."

"A _safe_ 'lot,' right?" Finn asked. 

"A safe lot," Kurt reassured him, and then they both turned to the door as it opened. Neither parent looked surprised to see Finn in there, despite Kurt's half-dressed state, but they did flinch at the bruises still darkening on his torso. "Oh, Kurt," Carole sighed.

Burt, pained, held out his hand. "Hey, uh... can you guys hand over your phones? Computers, too? You're not trapped in here, we don't want you to think that, but, well...."

"They're not trying to trap us," Finn confirmed to Kurt after a quick scan. Both parents flinched again at him feeling the need to verify their intentions.

"But what?" Kurt asked.

"Blaine might be in danger because he came with you," Burt said shortly. "Same with those other two. And the more you guys know, the more chance that you'll accidentally do something that the wrong people will hear about. Just... we just want to figure out what's supposed to happen next before you start texting anyone, okay?"

As Kurt's eyes widened, he mechanically retrieved his phone and laptop. Regret, shame, and fear poured off him in waves. "They all might be in danger?" Finn clarified, because he could tell even without trying that Kurt wasn't in the right headspace to put things into words.

"We're going to try to figure everything out," Carole said. "Just hang tight in here for a while. All right?" They both nodded and moved to leave them alone. As she left, Carole added, "And do try to go to sleep, all right? Night, boys. Remember: we both love you very, very much, and everything is going to work out. We promise."

She meant that, too, even if there was no real way to guarantee it. Finn found himself smiling after them as Kurt moved painfully toward the bathroom and the showerhead that would hopefully soothe the worst of his aches. "It'll work out," Finn repeated and went to his bedroom. The noise of the shower kept him awake until it turned off abruptly, but even then he couldn't drift away from what had to be the biggest day of his life.

They'd just decided to go to Columbus that morning, he marveled. In one day's time they'd risked their lives, wound up on television, and learned about their true pasts. That was crazy. No wonder he was buzzed. It would burn out, he told himself as he shifted his weight on the mattress. Any time now, he'd fall asleep.

He didn't. It was lonely in his quiet room, with only the pattern of leaves' shadows on his ceiling. He tried to ignore the way they moved, to ignore everything that had happened since that morning when Artie had suggested going on their mission, but his brain refused to shut down. The car flying at Kurt and Rachel. Hoping Mercedes' shields would hold. New York. Twins. 

Finn felt suddenly exposed. The wide slabs of a bunk should be above him and his room was too large and airy. Besides, he thought as he got up and gathered a few blankets, he wanted to talk. "Hey," he said as he poked his head into Kurt's room.

Kurt's exhaustion seemed to be a powerful sleep aid after the day he'd had, one that could overcome almost anything. Including the sound of Finn's voice, he saw with annoyance, and frowned when Kurt continued to softly snore. _Hey_ , he tried again, directly into Kurt's mind. He didn't feel bad about waking him; if Kurt had fallen asleep once when Finn couldn't manage it, he could fall asleep again.

Blinking, Kurt turned his head and looked at Finn. 

_Can I sleep in here?_ Finn asked. 

After an instant of hesitation, Kurt smiled. _Sure._

Finn grinned and hurried to the floor next to Kurt's bed. It wasn't comfortable. He wouldn't make a habit of doing this. But to hear Kurt's voice above him as they drifted off to sleep, to feel like he wasn't oddly abandoned in his own bedroom.... "How're you doing?" he asked when he was snug against the carpet. His ribs would yell at him tomorrow, but his heart thanked him.

"I don't know."

Reaching up, Finn found Kurt's hand and squeezed it. "July eleventh."

There was a soft rustling of blankets as Kurt propped himself up on his elbow and looked at Finn in confusion. The date was nearly half a month away, without any obvious meaning beyond 'one week after fireworks' prices take a nosedive.' He froze, then relaxed and said with wonder, "Our birthday."

'Our.' Finn giggled nervously. "Who do you think is older?"

"If you don't think that I am obviously the older brother, then there is something wrong with you," Kurt said.

"The term's 'big brother,' and right back at you," Finn grinned up at him.

"We couldn't have split the difference on height just a _little_ less?" Kurt asked with a sigh. "Not that I actually want to be all that much taller, but another inch or two would do wonders on the lines of some jackets." He studied Finn. "Thanks for coming in here."

"Sure?" Finn said uncertainly.

"Maybe it'll help me sleep better."

But he'd been sound asleep, so why did he need to sleep better? Finn looked at the memories of Kurt's dreams before he could help himself. Shadowy figures, the worst supervillains in the world, crowded Kurt's mind. Blaine was a broken, bleeding doll on the pavement. Even Sam and Lauren were slowly dying. All of this was seen from Kurt's perspective as he was helpless against the ground. One of those villains walked up to him, bent down, and retrieved Kurt's own sword. "Thanks for the heads-up," he said before he drove the blade between Kurt's eyes.

Jolting, Finn grabbed Kurt's hand again and squeezed. "Did you take the painkillers?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Nothing." He'd just been thinking that maybe Nyquil would have been a better option, so that Kurt could have fallen safely off into the deep end of nothing that night. Finn didn't particularly want to have those sort of dreams come flying at him when he was asleep and vulnerable, either. Struck by a sudden idea, Finn half-sat up and asked, "Do you want to feel what they felt?"

"Huh?"

If he could send thoughts at people, then he could send emotions. Right? "Do you want to know how much they love us?" Finn asked. "It's a lot. It really did make me feel better."

"All right," Kurt said warily.

Finn thought very carefully on what he'd felt from Burt when he surveyed his feelings for his first son. Pride, concern, amusement, and mingled awe were all wrapped up inside a package of love that burned brighter than any of their powers. He formed that all into a little knot in his head and then, not really knowing how, placed it into Kurt's.

When he heard Kurt shudder, Finn began to ask if he'd done something wrong. "No," Kurt said and wiped at his eyes. "No. That's how he feels?"

"Yeah. Maybe a little more. I've never, you know... sent a bunch of love at a guy before," Finn finished slowly and laughed. 

Kurt started laughing as well, but then his tears came—more than Finn expected. It had been a long day and Kurt kind of cried a lot anyway, but still, he'd just sent pure love and joy at someone. Crying was a weird reaction. Kurt wiped his eyes, got himself under control, and explained, "Sorry. I just... you and me... it's a little different than before."

Before? Finn frowned. He'd come in there because he _wanted_ them to be like before, though. Oh, he realized belatedly. Kurt didn't mean the 'before' of bunk beds. They were talking about the 'before' of privacy screens and Aladdin's whorehouse. "Yeah, well."

Kurt was probably still traumatized over the memories of what he'd done then. Those old days were resonating more than Finn would like, as well. He wasn't stuck on the sight of Kurt mooning over him; that had come back in a rush when he was talking to Rachel, but then it had faded just as quickly. Really, he was mostly past that, and it already felt like an embarrassing trump card that he could keep in his back pocket to humiliate Kurt at the most hilariously inappropriate moment. No: the memories that really echoed were Burt taking him to ball games. Kurt seeming isolated and lonely. The tears that threatened to spill in a basement when Finn wiped out his identity with one slur.

They were past that. He didn't know why all those memories were pounding at his mind and conscience again. Finn regularly screwed up like he was trying for a blue ribbon in it, but he thought he'd actually been pretty good recently. Hell, he'd saved Kurt's life that night.

Still, now that they'd raised the point, he kept picturing Kurt's teary, betrayed expression when he was made to feel less than human. Why?

Maybe coming in there had been a bad idea, Finn thought unhappily as Kurt's misery seemed to overtake him for no reason he could name. "Yeah, well," he eventually repeated. "Just wanted to remind myself of what it was like, you know? Having someone to talk to."

"It's nice," Kurt replied, laying back against his pillow. In the next breath he added, "We are not getting bunk beds."

Yeah, that would have been pushing things a little. "Night," Finn said and hoped that he wouldn't be brainwiped and moved to a new state again as he slept.

When Finn woke up, fresh dreams slipping from his mind, he had an unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Burt and Carole loved them with all their hearts. Of that, there was no question. Kurt and Finn had been as fortunate as two people could be, despite the turmoil around them. Even though Ohio had brainwashed the two of them, driven them apart, and set them at odds, Finn had the distinct impression that being there might be better than what they'd left. He couldn't remember specifics, just shadowy figments and half-formed emotions. They weren't pleasant.

He wondered why they could remember what their floor tiles look like, but had no idea who their parents had been.

He wondered what they'd talked about in that Manhattan bedroom as they'd fallen asleep.

* * *

Rachel's dads got home in the middle of the night. They woke her up, stroked her hair, and let her fall back asleep. She barely processed how the windows locked with a strange thunk, or how she heard the beeping of something she didn't recognize. She'd nearly died that night. Answers could wait until morning.

That morning, their smiles were sad and soft as they delivered a tray full of her favorite breakfast foods. "Hey, pumpkin," said Hiram as he put the tray in front of her. "Eat up, okay?"

"Did...." She swallowed. "Did you see the...."

"We know what you've been doing," Leroy said. He rubbed the back of his head and added, "We'd hoped this wouldn't happen. That tech crew were supposed to do a better job than they did. You need to lay low, all right? Just hold off until—"

"Why did we have to leave New York?" Rachel asked and Leroy looked like he almost swallowed his tongue.

Hiram was deathly pale. "You remember?"

"Bits. Parts. Kurt and Finn remember almost everything, I think."

They exchanged a wary glance. "That's good to know," Leroy said. "Okay. Promise you won't mention any of this to your friends until we get some things straightened out, all right?"

"But...." Her hands balled in frustration. It felt as if she were being forced along tracks, as if there were only one reaction she could have to anything. With determination, Rachel picked up the breakfast tray, placed it to her side, and stood. Her fathers were much taller than her, and she hardly struck an imposing figure in a nightgown and bare feet. Still, when she put her hands on her hips, they took a step back. "What is going on? You owe me an answer."

"We'll tell you—"

"Not later." Rachel looked between them. "Now."

"Sweetie—"

"On the last day of school our powers woke up," Rachel said. "We figured it out quickly and everyone naturally turned to me as the team leader. I organized everyone into groups and we've been operating all over northwestern Ohio. Last night we saved countless lives in Columbus, and it _will_ serve as the launching pad to a career that will have me at least on the superheroic B-list." She'd shoot for A-list, but honestly, B-listers seemed to get many of the perks without losing so many limbs, and the deep, broad bruises she'd taken were bad enough. "So... so there," she finished. Her voice only faltered a little. "I'm Anthem and I'm spectacular. That's the truth. Now you owe me yours."

They met each other's eyes again, sighed, and turned back. "We're special agents," Hiram said. "We're the primary S.H.I.E.L.D. point of contact for six Midwestern states that don't usually earn a ton of attention. It's why just the two of us cover so much territory."

She wasn't sure who S.H.I.E.L.D. was, but as revealing her ignorance would ruin the righteous snit she had going, Rachel kept her expression level. "I see."

"You could be in a lot of danger if you were noticed," Hiram continued. "You're supposed to be normal kids in Ohio. So it's important that, until we know what to do next, you don't tell people about New York. All right?"

"When do we get to go fight again?"

Her dads exchanged a wary glance. "Rachel, you can never use your powers again. At least not for a long time. Not in public like that."

"What?" Rachel demanded. "Did you see us? We stopped an entire university from being destroyed. We saved people from being killed." She fumbled for her remote, pointed to the screen, and added, "And I'm on television!"

"Yes, we _know_ ," Hiram said. "That's the entire problem."

"How can it be a problem?" Rachel pleaded. "The only problem is that I lied to you about what I was doing, and for that, all right, I'm sorry. But I'm strong, daddies. This is an even better future than I ever dreamed of. I'm not only going to be a musical icon, I'm going to be on _lunchboxes._ "

"Rachel," Leroy said gravely, "no."

It was hard to remember hearing 'no' from them. She wasn't sure if she ever had, actually. "Ground me," Rachel said. "Ground me and get it over with. I lied, I put myself in danger, and I operated a covert superheroic team out of our basement." She hesitated. "That's about... two weeks of grounding?"

"I need to talk to Burt," Leroy muttered.

"You know any of the others?" Hiram asked, and Leroy shook his head. "Didn't think so. I just brought in the Lopezes. Was that ever a challenge," he added regretfully. "We need to put in a call to HQ, then, to get instructions for the next step?"

"Daddies!" Rachel said as they ignored her. Though she got their attention, it wasn't how she'd hoped.

"Give us your phone, Rachel," they said, holding out their hands. "Cellular and landline. Your computer, too."

She gasped. "But... interviews!" she said. The single word seemed to grow to fill her mouth. It was all she could manage.

"After we've saved your lives," Hiram said after a quick glance to Leroy, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

"After you've saved our lives?" Rachel repeated in confusion.

"Please, sweetie. Just listen to albums today. Read your books. We need to figure out what to do next." 

But. "But." Frustrated, Rachel balled her fists and sought any possible argument. "But we have twins, now!" she said. "They'll be a huge hit!" It wasn't just how they'd protected Columbus and taken all the credit for saving those lives. She had been handed a marketable, photogenic pair of twins, where one was the leader's loyal boyfriend and the other could tuck his foot behind his head, and she was _not going to waste them._

"Oh heavens," Leroy said and rubbed a hand down his face. "They know that, too. Baby, we really need to talk to people, and you need to just... not do anything today."

They left her in her room. Rachel didn't stop sputtering until they were down the hall.

* * *

"Santana."

As she'd barely slept, Santana roused immediately. She sat up like her parents had turned the crank on a jack-in-the-box. Do what they expect, she told herself. Do what they expect. The orders marched through her mind. She had no room for emotions. They'd been hollowed out at some time around 3 AM, when she turned over her pillow because the cloth against her cheek was too wet. She'd expected to keep crying on the fresh fabric, but instead she simply... stopped. 

"We saw some very interesting things on the news last night."

Santana didn't say anything. She didn't trust her voice, and she couldn't think of any words that could help.

Her father's eyes were hard. "I don't think you realize how much I sacrificed to give you this life. You want something, you get it. You want a car, clothes, _surgery_ to be like those girls on television? Fine. I let you live those dreams. Right now I could be...." He cut off, angry, and didn't say anything else.

"We're very disappointed in you," said her mother. "You caused that fire, didn't you? You could have burned down the entire house, and that was only the start of everything. Then we see you in Columbus, with that group, and... well."

Though she tried to hide it, and though she'd expected it, Santana flinched. "Do I have to leave?" she asked dully. Brittany's parents wouldn't let her stay. Not for more than a night's sleepover, and now that she and Brittany had been filmed, maybe not even that much. Rachel's dads might offer a spare bedroom, given their whole rainbow flag deal. Wouldn't that be ironic, she thought darkly: she'd been forced to stay with Rachel overnight almost like a punishment, and now it might be her liferaft. Maybe she could stay in Kurt's guest room, like they'd originally planned after the fire. Or maybe she could jam an ice pick through her skull.

"You're not leaving," her father said sharply. "You're not going anywhere that we don't allow, seeing anyone that we don't approve, until we figure out what to do here."

Her relief at not being thrown out left her limp and drained. She'd been ready to bolt for the door with nothing but a half-packed bag in hand. Even if her parents were furious, she still had a home. She still had her family. That was something. "Okay," Santana said meekly. That tone of voice felt strange to her, like she was wearing someone else's shoes.

"I just... I need a drink," her father muttered and vanished without a farewell. Neither mother nor daughter commented on him doing so early in the morning, and soon Santana was left alone. She fumbled automatically for her phone. Brittany's texts were a lifeline even on normal days. When her parents argued, when another strange man left her neighbor's house and she wondered if this would be the day when the ongoing affairs were discovered, Brittany's words were full of joy. Even as Santana's parents raised their voices at her or each other, Brittany recognized how totally beautiful a flower could be.

Her phone was gone. They must have taken it during the night.

At least she still had a home, Santana told herself as the day faded away in a miserable blur. It could have been worse. So she didn't get the gay pride parade that it sounded like Kurt had gotten. She would take being Santana Lopez over being Kurt Hummel any day of the goddamn week, just so long as she had a home. And she did. So she could deal. 

Santana very nearly managed to believe what she was telling herself.

Morning ebbed into afternoon and they were suddenly on the news again. A shot of the club at Nationals was under a headline of "Superheroes Identified." Well. That hadn't taken long. Santana actually managed a small, wan smile when they talked about Noah Puckleman; he'd bitch about that mispronunciation for weeks, minimum. It was easy to find some humor so long as the reporter wasn't talking about her, but she didn't know how long that good fortune would last.

"Uh, yes, that's my club," said Will Schuester as he appeared on camera. Santana made a face before she could help it. Will wasn't exactly the best person with words. Hopefully he wouldn't ramble and make things worse. "No, I had no idea this was going on. I'm pretty stunned."

"Were you aware that they were using your club as a cover for their operations?" the reporter asked. The intent look on her face was clearly designed to make any viewer think that she was speaking fact rather than speculation. 

"Were they?" Will asked. He was getting flustered. Awesome. He would indeed make things worse. "I was really just running a choir."

"I've done some looking into that choir," the reporter said with a glance at her notes. "Every time you faced closure, you just barely dodged the bullet. Did government backers keep the choir going? Or was your principal threatened by these so-called 'heroes?'"

"Wait, what?" Will sputtered. "My kids haven't threatened anyone. They're usually the ones getting targeted."

Pirouetting smoothly on her stance, the reporter asked sympathetically, "Do you suspect that's what might have driven them to act out like this?"

"Act out?" Will repeated in disbelief. He saw her opening her mouth again and seized control of the interview, courtesy of his flaring temper. "You listen to me, Ohio. These are good kids. If you were paying attention like I was, then you saw them save lives. A lot of these kids have been dumped on because of how they look or how they act or who they pray to or who they love, and I think it's pretty damn courageous of them to want to help people even after that."

"Mr. Schuester has pointed out one of the more dramatic moments of last night's fight in Columbus," the reporter said, moving to the side and cutting Will out of the frame. She was soon accompanied only by an idyllic background shot of McKinley. Will's offscreen protests were ignored. Although Santana expected to see footage of her on fire, or a building collapsing, they instead showed the three unmasked humans running up to join their partners with a kiss. "As with all youth teams to form in recent years, this group made sure to include gay members on their roster."

Santana's gut clenched as they showed the masked Kurt making out with Blaine, as she knew what was coming next. Sure enough, the screen soon changed to her kiss with Brittany. Seen in the third person like that, it was like some nightmare: walk into a classroom naked, take a test for a new class, have a lesbian kiss broadcast across the state.

Two new figures crowded the reporter from the other side. "We know them!" said Erik, a boy on the Cheerios who'd escaped the worst of Sue's wrath during his years on the squad. He'd been content to be in the background, propping up holds, while the more memorable members like her got both the blame and the glory. "Yeah, yeah, Brittany and Santana!"

"You mean Santana-and-Brittany," said Jason, his fellow invisible squadmate. The name came out like a single being. "They've been that way forever." He leaned closer to the camera and repeated for emphasis, "For- _ever._ "

"There was also a male homosexual couple in the group," the reporter noted. "We've noticed that other teen teams tend to hold such pairings to one, maximum. Are the Awesomes trying to make a statement?" To her credit, she didn't laugh at Finn's stupid name for the group.

"Oh," Jason snorted. "They're not a couple."

Santana frowned and hugged her pillow to her chest. Wait, what?

Erik snorted to match him. "Yeah. They just make out for attention. I went out on a date with them freshman year and wound up buying unlimited pasta and breadsticks. And we _weren't_ at Breadstix."

"It's creepy," Jason agreed. "Your wallet just... opens. It's like magic."

"Really, really hot magic," Erik said with a grin that danced shamelessly on the line between nostalgic and perverted.

When the reporter started talking about the number of deaths that could have been averted in Columbus, Santana realized she was crying. Wasn't that what she wanted? She'd thought the closet had been yanked open for her because she was too adrenaline-fueled to realize what that lineup of cameras actually meant. Now those two boys had gracefully, believably slid it shut. If she'd kissed Brittany, it was to be popular. She'd done it for boys. The male audience, aged 18-45.

She had an excuse.

It didn't have to mean anything.

It didn't... but it _did._ How dare they? How dare they act like she'd done it for _them?_ How _fucking dare_ they take her moment of finally kissing Brittany where the world could see and act like it was for the sole benefit of what hung between their legs?

When a smoke alarm went off above her head, Santana realized with a jerk that her pillow had collapsed into ash. Her hands were tiny furnaces that had steadily burned through cotton and poly-fill as she clutched it. Her parents rushed to her door when they heard the sound, took in the sight there, and set their mouths in grim lines.

"Get ready, Santana," said her father.

Santana glanced out the window and distantly noted that despite their names being shouted across the airwaves, there weren't any media vans actually outside her house. Funny. If she had any energy left, she might wonder why.

* * *

So, Puck thought grimly as he balanced the dining table on his head, he might be in really deep trouble. He'd already had his truck pulled for two weeks, thanks to sneaking out. It sounded like he might have to talk to someone in authority, too. He wasn't a fan of anyone in a uniform.

Except when Kurt was in skintight leather.

_Damn_ , his brain was still turned halfway to rainbow.

"Will you put that _down_ , Noah?" his mother snapped.

"But Mom!" Sarah protested as Puck gently returned their table to the linoleum. "That was cool!"

"She thinks it was cool," Puck said, shrugging.

"And she is supposed to be in her room," his mother said grimly. "If she hadn't snuck down into the middle of our discussion, she would be." She cleared her throat pointedly until Sarah left them alone, and then shot Puck a long-suffering look. "How long has this been going on?"

Puck swallowed and tried to focus on anything except the way Kurt had put every last girl on the Cheerios to shame with that contortionist act. It didn't work. "Since about... yesterday morning."

She stared at him. "You started acting like you're on the Avengers, made a costume, and tore apart a city all starting yesterday morning?" 

"Oh." Puck cleared his throat. "You meant... that stuff."

She ran her hands through her hair in exasperation. "What did you think I was talking about?"

"Nothing," Puck said quickly. And it was nothing. He had a girlfriend, Kurt had a boyfriend, and Puck was only Freddie, not Elton. Plus, getting thrown into buildings the night before probably played into his mind acting so strangely. "So I shredded some bad guys. Go me. Uh, and I've been doing it for about a month."

"A month. I just can't... I need a drink," she said. "And you need to go up to your room until I can figure out what to do next."

Sarah poked her head around the corner at the top of the stairs. "Can he lift me on my bed?"

Puck turned, his eyebrows raised in question.

"No lifting your sister."

* * *

"This is all my fault," Artie heard his mother say mournfully as she paced the living room. "It was that treatment for his spine. I'm sure of it."

The conversation had been going on for a while. Every time Artie's hands began to steal toward his wheels, they told him not to move.

"You know," Artie pointed out, "I wasn't on TV. You can't prove I was there."

His father cleared his throat pointedly and stood over him. "Were you there in Columbus, Arthur?"

His courage did not last long, Artie discovered as he stared up at the man. "Yes sir I was," he almost squeaked.

"This is all my fault," his mother said again and his torture began anew.

* * *

Finn wondered what was going on with the others, as a good part of the day had passed with them locked inside the house. He kept checking their parents' minds and nodding to Kurt. They were still concerned and trying to keep them safe. They were still trustworthy. Ignoring the histories that had brought them to Ohio, they were still the same people they'd always been.

"I need a better shot," Kurt said as he watched them again on the television. Lima didn't get much news, normally. It had lost out on another national cheerleading championship that year, and so it was hungrier than ever for anything that might bring them glory. "My hair's a mess. I swear I have _gravel_ stuck to my cheek, too."

"That's probably all they got last night," Finn said. "I mean... unless you meant you'd go out again. Did you?"

Kurt stared at the screen for a very long time before he answered, "I don't know. I nearly died, Finn. I would have, if not for you. Now they know my real name. Everything I was worried about with people being in danger, well, it might come true. And fighting again won't make _me_ famous, though; it'd still be that not-so-secret identity."

"All those words sounded like 'no,'" Finn pointed out. He didn't need to add that Kurt's voice, his _heart_ wasn't so sure.

"Exactly three people have asked me if I wanted to sing a featured role in front of an audience," Kurt said after a long, thoughtful pause. "Mr. Schuester was going to give me a solo out of pure pity, or maybe to make up for his own notable failings in stopping my bullying. I mean, that timing was just hysterical. I didn't even process what he'd offered until a few days later, when I was already gone. And right after that I learned that the Warblers thought that I was too showy and over-the-top."

Finn blinked. They seemed like nice guys; that didn't sound like them. "Who told you that?"

"Blaine. He—very nicely—suggested that I not try so hard after I auditioned for a solo. He'd been in there when they discussed me, so that had to be coming straight from the Council's mouth." Kurt shrugged. Finn didn't need psychic abilities to know that all these memories stung; taking criticism well didn't mean it was welcomed.

But that didn't make any sense. Finn had heard Kurt describe what they were like during practices. 'Don't try hard' didn't exactly match up to a group of guys who were all about flips and jumps and over-the-top performances. Hell, every expression Blaine made onstage basically defined 'try hard.' It wasn't like he was the only one; Rachel had some goofy showfaces, too. But for that same group to like those expressions and think that the audition Kurt had prepared was too much... Finn scratched his head and pointed out the obvious. "But they asked you to sing a duet."

"No. Blaine wanted to sing a duet with me." Kurt shrugged again. "It was pretty blatantly to flirt. I was happy about it, and I was happy that they gave him what he wanted, but no one independently thought of me for a performance." He glanced at Finn sidelong for a second and added, "I guess you wouldn't really know what that feels like."

Okay, ouch. Fair point, but ouch. "So then when did...?"

"Coach Sylvester." Kurt pulled his knees to his chest. "She thought I was talented and she put me up front, and then we won. Before or since, I've never felt so...." He laughed once and sounded embarrassed. "Special. Like I really had something to offer."

Finn glanced at the television, back to Kurt, and wondered how this all related.

"No one else could have saved us from the cops that first night," Kurt said softly. "It had to be me. We made mistakes when we split up, but then other people got a chance to shine. And then there'll be days when I'm perfect again. Not because someone is taking pity on me, but because _I'm the best._ " He laughed weakly and tried to wave off his words. "I'm sorry, this sounds incredibly selfish. I used to talk about helping people who no one cares about and now I'm all about an ego boost."

"You still saved people," Finn pointed out. "You scared off that guy before he shot someone."

Kurt eyed him. "Me scaring him _made_ him shoot at the group."

Oh. Right. Oops. "Well... you definitely kept us from being thrown into jail, like you said. And you kept Rachel safe when we got separated, right? All of us together kept those jerks busy so they didn't hurt a bunch of kids on campus. I know they're not mutants or... or gay kids or immigrants or blind people or whatever, but they're still people who could have gotten hurt and they didn't." Considering that, Finn added, "And for all we know, maybe one of the people we saved was a blind gay mutant from Mexico."

After a long pause, Kurt said, "You are really terrible at speeches."

"Well," Finn said with a loose grin, "Burt sets a pretty high standard." That made Kurt laugh a bit and Finn elbowed him gently. "I think you're allowed to want more than one thing at a time. So maybe you want to really help people, and maybe you also want to feel like what you're doing really counts. It seems like those two things work together, right?"

"I guess so," Kurt allowed.

The realization of just what was so odd about their discussion struck Finn. "Um, you kind of sound like you want to keep doing this."

Kurt didn't say anything.

"Not that that's bad. I mean, who knows if we'll even be allowed out of the house for the next year, and then it'd be kind of hard, but, uh... you kind of sound like you want to keep doing this," Finn repeated. "And you really didn't. Before." He waited for an answer, and eventually prodded, "Do you?"

"I don't know," Kurt said with what he probably thought was complete honesty.

Inside him, Finn felt real compassion for all those blind gay mutants from Mexico that no one else looked out for. They mattered, even if almost everyone in the world thought they didn't. Kurt just wanted to feel that, too.

* * *

"Why aren't there vans outside the house?" Rachel asked her dads when she'd waited patiently into the afternoon. "They know who was there. We're in the phone books. Why isn't anyone coming to talk to us?"

"We've taken care of the media," Leroy said neutrally. "Some of them started going to houses last night. They were called off. We can't stop them from going on the air, at least not without a lot of government trouble, but we can make them think that their lives will be very unpleasant if they don't cooperate on this point."

Frustrated tears threatened. "You're telling me that people might want to come interview me and you're stopping them?"

"Yes," Hiram said bluntly.

All she'd ever wanted was to be noticed. To be something bigger than the day before. Not because she'd created fame out of mist and vapor like some reality television star, but because she was good enough to _earn_ it. Her team had earned fame last night. Her chance to finally be noticed was there... and she couldn't take it. "This is incredibly unfair," she said through a choked throat. "How dare you. How _dare_ you move me away from a city where I could already have auditioned for roles on Broadway, and put me in a town where I don't even remember that I had those chances? And now that I'm someone worth noticing, you're taking that from me, too?"

"Rachel, stop," Leroy said tiredly.

"No, Daddy! I will not stop! I'm owed answers! I've been calm and compliant and very, very accommodating all day, but my patience has about five minutes left." She looked between them. The two men did actually look a bit wary at the idea of her composure entirely failing her. "Answer yes or no. Did we used to live in New York?"

"No," Leroy said, just as Hiram answered, "It's complicated." They glanced at each other and grimaced.

"What?" Rachel asked, blinking. But she remembered living on the Upper West Side. Vaguely, but even those shadowy images were enough to convince her. And Kurt and Finn were positive.

"We... look. We heard back from command and we're taking you for some solid answers, all right? But we're not the agents who can give them." Hiram sighed. "We know everything, or near enough. But orders are orders."

* * *

Mercedes' mother poked her head into the living room. "Let's go, sweetheart. We've just been told where we're all meeting up."

She shot an uncertain glance to her little brothers. They seemed overwhelmed, as much from their sister being on the news as from the fact that she was so deeply in trouble that she had to go to school during the summer.

Still, her parents had talked about how worried they were. They'd fretted over her safety. They hadn't disowned her. They hadn't forbidden her from seeing any friends. So they probably just wanted to talk to the whole group together, right? To make sure everyone heard the same thing?

Right.

She took a deep breath and told herself that, over and over.

This would all be fine.

* * *

"Dad—"

"We'll talk later."

Mike didn't open his mouth again until they'd parked the car.

* * *

"Please wait," Judy said as she hurried after her daughter.

Quinn didn't slow her pace as she walked through the doors of William McKinley and toward the gym. Most of the others were already there.

* * *

Burt pulled back the curtains, looked outside, and shook his head. "They're probably all there by now."

Finn and Kurt shifted their weight uncertainly on the couch. Apparently, everyone else had been called for a meeting in the gym. Whoever was in charge of the whole affair thought it was common, familiar ground that they would be comfortable with, and soon the entire group would hear exactly what S.H.I.E.L.D. was willing to tell them. 

(Finn still wasn't sure who S.H.I.E.L.D. was.)

The two of them, however, had been left in limbo. Their unearthed memories were apparently quite problematic. Talking to their parents had revealed just how little information they'd been given, so he supposed that wasn't a surprise. Burt knew that Leroy Berry was an agent and that Rachel was adopted. Carole hadn't even known that much when she moved to Lima. She only knew enough about Finn to mother him, and had no idea how many other children in town were like him or who they might be. 

Seeing the masked members of New Directions on the television had mingled shock, fear, and a grim sense of inevitability. Of course it was them. Of course it was all of them. S.H.I.E.L.D. apparently knew what to do if powers erupted. They didn't quite know what to do, though, with two boys who remembered their old street address in Manhattan.

"Can we please go?" Kurt asked for what seemed like the dozenth time. "I just want to see everyone and make sure they're all right."

"I'm waiting to hear back," Carole said, distracted. "And they'll be fine. Everyone signed a contract. No one is getting thrown out of their houses, nothing like that."

Just as Kurt began to say that he was worried about more than the extremes of being thrown out, Finn frowned and said, "But Quinn was." Carole didn't have an answer for that.

Finn wanted to go and see everyone, too.

Eventually Burt returned from a phone call. He looked very serious. "Okay, boys. They say you can go see everyone, but you have to stay absolutely quiet about New York for now. Got it?" They both nodded. "And about, you know... brothers." They nodded again and he exhaled, long and slow. "Guess that's that, then. The agent in charge wanted to see everyone."

"He's black," Finn said suddenly.

Burt blinked. "Come again?"

"The agent in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D.," Finn said as another bubble burst in his memory. "He's a black guy. I can kind of see him. Sort of. Um. Never mind, now it's gone."

Kurt perked up. "Oh! Maybe it's not 'in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D.,' but just this program. Artie's been obsessing off and on about Matt, right?"

Matt! "That makes total sense," Finn said. Of course! Matt had been secretly spying on them, and then he felt secure enough to leave the choir after a year of observation. Look at them, already figuring out how all this worked.

Burt and Carole blinked, and then Carole said, "Ah, right. Well, we'd better get a move on. It sounds like everyone is waiting for us." A face floated into Carole's mind and Finn jolted with surprise. It was exactly the one he'd tried to latch onto. The man was older and grimmer than Matt, and he wore a pretty badass eyepatch that heightened his dark mood all the more. Whoever that was, Finn had clearly met him before. As a former agent, so had Carole.

Who _were_ all these people? 

"Your friends are probably being asked a lot of unpleasant questions," Burt said as they pulled out of the garage. "You were able to call us on New York, but remember, so far as they know, this is home and always has been. They never had any other families. And until S.H.I.E.L.D. says it's okay to tell them, you need to keep things under wraps. Got it?"

"Got it," Kurt said. Finn was a bit surprised at how Kurt not only said the worlds but seemed to agree with them, and sent a bolt of curiosity toward him. The answer he got back made sense: _Learning everything so suddenly had me running away from home. If learning things more gently will help, well... let's help._

Finn nodded. Carole's eyes caught his in the rearview mirror. "And don't tell anyone anything telepathically," she warned him.

Jolted, Finn asked, "How did you know I—"

"Mom sense."

_Like Spider-Man._

Finn stayed quiet for the rest of the ride.

"Will we get to go to school here again next year?" he asked as they parked in the mostly-empty lot and started walking toward McKinley's doors.

"We don't know," Carole admitted. "Probably?"

Remembering Kurt saying that he wasn't up for another transfer, Finn squeezed his shoulder encouragingly. Kurt shot him a quick smile back.

Burt looked up from whatever he was reading on his phone. "Looks like the other kids are all there, already. They'll take you all through the main deal first, and then they'll talk to the, uh...."

"Normal people," Kurt supplied, and smiled at Burt's grimace and apology. "It's okay."

_Just remember_ , Finn thought at him, _they can be normal. We're special._

That earned another smile, more genuine than the one he'd given to Burt, as they reached the gymnasium and walked inside. Everyone else was already there and looked anywhere from confused to terrified. Tina and Mercedes looked generally upset, but Mike silently trembled as Quinn glared at anyone unfortunate to catch her eye. Puck had the grumpy expression that he wore when he'd gotten into a long argument with his mother and lost, but when he saw the two of them walking in, he sat straight up and his eyes went wide.

Something odd prickled at Finn's brain, but another, even more overwhelming emotional response dragged all his attention toward Santana. She looked ready to be hauled off to her own execution as she sat between her parents. Misery rolled off her in waves. Brittany kept glancing at her with concern, but every time she did Santana's emotions only darkened more.

Strange, Finn thought as he took a seat on the bottom bleacher. Rachel wiggled her fingers at him; he waved back.

"Thank you all for coming," Leroy Berry said as he stood and walked to the front of the group. "I suppose we can begin now. Although I work for S.H.I.E.L.D., I only knew one other of you before last night." He nodded to Burt, who nodded back. "Now, I suppose we've all learned just which children in this town were put under watch for safekeeping."

"Put under watch?" Quinn repeated, blinking.

"You'll learn all about it soon enough," Leroy promised her. "But we can at least tell you now that your parents aren't all who we said we are." Finn shifted his weight on the hard seat and saw Burt and Carole shake their heads once at him. To placate them, he slumped down and tried not to move.

When no one spoke up, Leroy looked hopefully at Burt again. Burt cleared his throat and said, "I'm not actually a mechanic. Or I didn't start off as one, anyway. I used to work for Stark Industries."

"I was a field agent for S.H.I.E.L.D.," Carole said and looked to the side. Everything began to have the feeling of students introducing themselves on the first day of school. 

The others began to speak up one by one as their children looked at them in surprise. "I am really a dentist," said Mercedes' father. "But I worked for NASA. Strange things can happen in space. I did a lot of reconstruction."

"I was a stay-at-home mother," Judy said in a wavering voice. The hostility radiating off Quinn probably explained her nerves. "It was Russell who worked for S.H.I.E.L.D., but I had to go through all the checks, too."

Artie's parents did financial work for the CIA. Puck's mom archived files for Congress. Santana's dad was a doctor stationed at Peterson Air Force Base, and her mom was an engineer who kept up Cheyenne Mountain. Brittany's parents both worked on special government projects with Boeing. Tina's did lab maintenance at Los Alamos. 

"The FBI kept me on staff when they had the budget, on retainer when they didn't," finished Mike Chang, Sr. "You'd be surprised how many wrongful injury cases get brought against them." With a glance to his wife, he answered for her. "Julia only worked for a bank in Silver Spring, but I got invited to some very important parties. It was easier if she had clearance, too."

As the children sat there, all stunned except for Kurt, Rachel, and Finn, Leroy picked up the explanation again. "You can all see that a lot of effort has been made to keep you safe. This is just a taste of how hard we're working to keep you out of harm's way."

"Who wants to hurt us?" Mercedes asked.

"No one wants to hurt you," Hiram half-laughed.

"But he just said that we're being kept 'out of harm's way,'" Quinn said pointedly.

Hiram sighed. "I'm bad at this. Look, we're not really in charge here. We're just general field agents! The permanent agent for this case is much better suited to discuss matters. However much Colonel Fury has allowed, anyway." He checked his phone. "Actually, we might get that explanation now. We've got an arrival. Excellent."

"Wait, wait, _wait_ ," Mercedes said more firmly. "Our parents are crazy government spies or something, someone wants to hurt us, and there's a 'permanent agent' who's been stalking us all this time?"

Her father pointed out with surprising good humor, "And you've been sneaking out for a month to go be a superhero, Mercedes." Some of the parents seemed to agree with him quite pointedly, while other children matched her defiant eyebrow pop.

"It'll all make sense," Leroy promised. "It'll make more sense when it's not us explaining any more," he added just under his breath.

Rachel shot Finn a quick thought in the silence. _How did everything go last night?_

_Uh. Kurt ran away, Burt tracked him down in a cemetery, we slept together, and I'm not so sure about New York any more._ He had to fight down a groan. _I mean, I went to his room. And slept there. On the floor. It already felt weird to be alone; things must be changing fast._

She nodded once and looked faintly concerned. _Perhaps it is better to let them set the pace of releasing information, then._

About to respond, Finn caught the same strange feeling off Puck as before. He turned and squinted at the boy, who stared back like he'd been caught. Just as Finn was about to say something to Puck, he felt a new arrival and icewater ran along his nerves. He turned to the door before the rest of the group, who joined him when they heard footsteps.

A tall, strong figure filled the gymnasium entrance. Military-grade boots gave way to heavy fatigues. Holsters were heavy with guns and medals told of a successful career on the front lines. The agent assigned to them looked the group over in a slow survey, did so again, and sighed.

"I really do hate this club," said Sue Sylvester.


	15. They Should Have Thought of a Name

New Directions was silent for a long, awkward beat as they stared at Sue Sylvester in combat gear. Rachel had the distinct feeling that, unless things started making much more sense very soon, her head might explode.

"Oh, this can't be good," Quinn said.

Sue strode toward them. Her combat boots were loud against the ground. When she pulled out a gun, everyone leaned back a few inches, children and parents alike. "See this?" No one answered and she scowled at the nearest face. "Brittany, I asked you a question."

Brittany blinked owlishly at the contents of her hand. "Yes?"

"Because of your little escapade last night, I had to pull out the heavy artillery. I'm packing special bullets just in case things abruptly move from bad to worse." She fished in her pocket and retrieved a small box. Opening it revealed bullets that glowed like miniature fluorescent lights.

"Ooh," Brittany said and leaned toward them; her dad quickly pulled her back. Sue snorted and began to pace. Their parents looked wary at Sue Sylvester being in charge of their children's safety, and most of the students seemed ready to join Rachel in her raging headache.

Sue shot them a few more pointed glares before continuing. "You are making it impossible to meet my mission requirements. I'd be tempted to shoot those bullets at you, if I didn't think you'd just start shining when they hit. You'd probably suck in the energy like perky vampires and start some horrible Up With People revival tour."

"Your mission requirements?" Kurt asked in disbelief. "But... I...."

"And here I thought gay men were supposed to be good with words." Sue chuckled to herself. "'Men.' Well, I suppose that still gives you about eight years to catch up." Her gun slid neatly into its holster. 

"Hey," Burt said, frowning.

"Is for horses," Sue replied, "which I'm sure you are familiar with, as you're dressed to clean out a barn. I want to talk to the kids alone." When no one moved, she cleared her throat pointedly. "That was not a request. That was me invoking the part of your contract that says you're required to follow the orders of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in charge of this program: Sue Sylvester."

"I don't remember signing anything like that," Tina's mother said archly.

"We did," sighed Mike's dad. When the other adults looked dubious, he said, "It was well into the stack of papers. She was only described by title, of course."

"I don't read fine print," Puck's mother grumbled. Most of the group seemed to agree with her, even as the resident lawyer looked horrified, but they were all persuaded enough to leave their children with Sue. Though most of the teens looked longingly after any shields between them and Sue, Santana looked ready to cry with relief. Things must not have gone well last night, Rachel thought with concern.

Sue continued once they were alone. "You can't _begin_ to know how annoyed everyone was that, after our very careful efforts to keep you apart, you all joined that stupid glee club. I'm pretty sure the words at headquarters would have stripped the paint off an Amish wagon. We planted an operative to make sure your memories weren't coming back when you latched onto each other."

"Matt," Artie realized. Finn nodded sagely and looked proud of himself.

"Agent Rutherford got some plastic surgery to knock off a few years and watched you little moppets," Sue confirmed. "When we were confident that the wipe stuck, he got called back for other assignments. No need to commit two trained agents to high school. Have you paid attention to those classes? Talk about a waste of time." 

Santana spoke up, having seemed to gain some confidence now that she was alone. "If you're some badass special government agent, then why were you such a raging bitch as a freaking cheerleading coach?"

Sue smiled nostalgically. "I've foiled the pathetic machinations of Doom’s minions, disassembled an AIM gene bomb with seconds left on the timer, and hunted Nazi commanders through the Alps."

Mercedes held up her hand. "Hold up, your _mom_ is the Nazi hunter. You don't get to be everything."

"We're both Nazi hunters," Sue said. "I've run three campaigns against Red Skull. My mother just gets the missions that she can talk about in public. As I was saying, my work is legendary. And then I got assigned to Evil Mayberry. I've trained commandoes to take down supervillains; now I'm training future trophy wives and cabana boys to do toe touches and herkies." She saw their bewildered expressions, sighed in annoyance, and summarized, "I got bored."

She'd starved her squad members and screamed at them and bought a cannon because she got _bored?_ "Wait. So all this time," Rachel began slowly, trying to pin facts that wanted to squirm away like eels, "you've really been...."

"On orders of Colonel Nick Fury, head of S.H.I.E.L.D., I've been trying to destroy Will Schuester's glee club to protect the future of humanity."

"What?" Puck managed.

"And you're all so ungrateful," Sue said.

"Why does keeping the glee club apart from each other 'protect the future of humanity?'" Rachel asked in a voice that grew louder with each word. Aware that she might fire off her sonic blasts on accident, she tried to rein herself in.

"If I don't tell you kids everything," Sue said, "then you won't be able to tell them anything if you're tortured." Everyone gawked. "Come on, basic strategy. Some of you should know this," she added, annoyed. "This has been part of my pre-Nationals pep talk for... you know, I suppose I actually only went once. Can't say I minded having all those memories of my constant glory implanted in the general populace's head, though," she added with a chuckle.

Kurt kept boggling at her. "You're referring to the pep talk where you told us what to do if members of another squad tried to kidnap, interrogate, and/or mutilate us." He sat in stunned silence when she cheerfully nodded, and then turned to Brittany and muttered, "I thought she was kidding." Quinn seemed at a loss over the implanted memory of the same 'pep talk' from Sue Sylvester in her freshman year, and Santana could barely muster the energy to blink.

"So you don't want to destroy New Directions because you hate the arts," Tina ventured.

"Oh, I think your amelodic yodeling is as big a waste of time as the annual career festival. Let's be honest: no one from this school needs to hear about any job that offers full benefits." Sue waved dismissively in the direction of the choir room. "The National Endowment for the Arts spent a hundred and twenty-five million dollars on useless feel-good antics last year. Do you know how much that would pay for things that actually matter?" When no one answered, she continued, "Just over four hours of the Iraq War could be fought on the dime of people who think that peeing on a dashboard Jesus will make them the next Da Vinci."

"Four hours," Artie repeated in disbelief.

"I'm glad to hear you agree with me," she said, and spoke over him when he protested. "Those could be four _extremely key_ hours." Sue shrugged. "But there are plenty of things that annoy me and I don't dedicate myself to eliminating them. Otherwise, the heads of the Kardashian clan—minus Khloe—would be stuffed and mounted on my wall."

Right: Sue Sylvester was a secret agent and she had a favorite Kardashian. If Rachel didn't get a firm handle on reality right that second, her head might very well just float off. "Then why—"

"I've told you: to protect the future of humanity. Keep up, 'Anthem.'"

Rachel didn't rise to the bait of her code name being sneered like an insult. "You've told us a lot of very general things that mean nothing in the end, Ms. Sylvester. We're owed more of an explanation than what you're giving us." Sue raised an eyebrow as Rachel folded her arms across her chest. "I can just have Finn read your mind, you know."

"You mean you would _ask_ Finn to read her mind," Finn corrected. Rachel tried to hold back her irritation. She was making a point and Finn was not helping.

"Really," Sue said, and she actually seemed amused at Rachel's nerve. "Would you do that, Little Miss Leader?"

"Of course I would," Rachel replied. Her chin raised defiantly until she felt as if an onlooker could peer right up her nose.

"And what would you say if I told you that I'm shielded against any telepathic probes, and a psychic stupid enough to try to read my thoughts would wind up as a lobotomized husk on the floor?" Sue smirked at Finn, who'd gone pale. "Not that you'd notice."

"I don't think that's possible," Artie said after a thoughtful moment. "Wouldn't a psychic just tie off shields she'd made, to hide whatever your memories are, and leave it pretty non-reactive? I haven't read about any psychic booby traps wrecking people's brains. I mean... I think. Maybe." He bit his lower lip and then said to Finn, "Don't quote me on that."

Just within the boundaries of her peripheral vision, Rachel saw Kurt and Finn exchange a glance, then nod. Kurt took a deep breath, stood, and wiped his presumably sweaty palms on his pants before he could help himself. "Coach Sylvester," he said, and his voice wavered for just a second. "If I may?"

"You may not, Porcelain. Sit down."

"I have something that needs to be discussed as we negotiate for information." He turned to look at everyone, seemed to gather strength from their encouraging nods, and refocused on Sue. "If we had known what our powers were, we wouldn't have run into dangerous situations discovering them. If we'd been allowed to train under supervision, we wouldn't have put ourselves at risk in public. And if we'd been told the truth about our pasts," he said meaningfully, "then I wouldn't have almost run away last night."

Sue narrowed her eyes. Rachel couldn't decide whether she looked ready to smile at his audacity, bite his head off, or both. "The truth about your pasts?" she repeated, clearly daring him to expand upon that statement. Every line of her body said that it would be a terrible idea for Kurt to keep talking.

If it was a bluff, Kurt called it. Quinn looked satisfied at whatever was happening, Brittany chewed her thumbnail, and Santana could barely move. "I'm sure you laughed when you filed my squad medical paperwork, Coach Sylvester, since you knew perfectly well that the birthday was wrong." Her smile thinned further, but Kurt kept going. "I'm not a Gemini, am I?"

"Astrology is the realm of the weak-minded and easily-led." Despite the insult, Sue seemed almost... nervous.

"July eleventh falls under Cancer, doesn't it?" Kurt smiled at the tiny but visible flinch that date earned. "Please, no comments about that name. I can't say that I'm a fan. And really, all things considered, Gemini would have been far more appropriate."

"Wait, what?" Mike asked. "We've got different birthdays? What's going on?"

"Not all of us," Finn said. He didn't look away from Sue as he talked. "Just some of us."

As Sue began to chuckle darkly about having a talk with their parents, Rachel saw something on the floor and leaned over to Artie. Like a habit, he'd grabbed his backpack when he headed to school. She hoped that he'd thrown it aside at the start of the summer and not organized the contents within. "Artie, may I please see your bag?" she whispered, and with an odd look he handed it over. She found her target in short order. With a proud smile she held up a miniature photo album that was packed cover-to-cover with images of New York. "Ms. Sylvester," Rachel said politely as she wiggled her trophy. "If you were supposed to destroy the club, then what was running through your mind when we not only made it to Nationals, but went to... _New York?_ "

Sue looked between the three of them. Her lips pursed and she looked ready to hit something or someone, but then she abruptly relaxed. "All right, kids. If you're willing to play with fire, then I'll let you get burned. You're right. If you knew what was going on, then maybe you would have avoided that astonishingly moronic stunt last night that could have set off a domino effect that will end with the destruction of all mankind."

"You're not going to scare us into behaving with ghost stories," Quinn said.

"These aren't stories," Sue replied. She checked something on her belt and, after seeming satisfied that they were alone, pulled up a folding metal chair in front of them and sat. "I have one condition. I will tell you what I feel is appropriate for today. If you have any more knowledge, just keep it to yourselves for now and it'll come out a little later." She saw the distrustful stares from Rachel, Kurt, and Finn. "This is going to get heavy quick, kids. Add any more and you'd just be confusing them."

Before any of the others could ask the trio what they knew, Sue began her tale. "As you might have guessed from Berry's prop comedy stylings, you used to live in New York City." Nearly everyone sat up straight, stared at her for a long second, and then began to talk excitedly over one another. "Hey. Hey!" she shouted. "I've barely started."

When they'd calmed, she continued. "Your parents worked at a government lab that was trying to explore new energy sources. Between that fusion disaster a few years back in Manhattan and how expensive Stark's first commercial arc reactor will be, the government was hoping to find a reliable and _cheap_ supply. The Eastern Seaboard's grid is dying a slow death." 

Rachel felt the information about infrastructure and cost allowances start to go over her head. Looking around the others revealed that, despite the shocking mention of New York, people were quickly becoming bored. She saw a wicked glint in Sue's eyes that said she was getting just the reaction she'd hoped for and resolved to keep focused until she came back to relevant information. 

Once she'd sufficiently punished them with the minutia of aging infrastructure, Sue circled back around to what mattered. "In recent years the government has come into the possession of an object of incredible power. I don't understand its properties, which is fine; they don't pay me to. It nearly turned the tide of World War II in the wrong direction. It vanished for a while, but then Washington recovered it and has expended an awful lot of effort to get this thing figured out."

"What is it?" Puck asked.

Sue hesitated for just a breath, like she was debating whether she would give a title to this secret project, and then said, "The Cosmic Cube."

"The Cosmic Cube," Puck repeated slowly. "That has got to be one of the stupidest names I've ever heard in my life."

Sue eyed him. "I'm sorry, am I not talking to a member of 'the Awesomes?'"

Everyone turned to Finn. He folded his arms and said without any apology, "You guys should have thought of a name."

She snorted and continued. "Well, Puckerman, Washington actually agrees with you. People have also just been calling it 'the Tesseract.' Their best guess is that it's an unstable fold between a bunch of different dimensions, all with their own energy. If you can figure out how to plug it into an outlet, then Happy New Year, kids, let's turn Buffalo into Times Square."

"What does that have to do with us?" Tina asked.

"You are all spectacularly slow," Sue said. "I am constantly amazed at your refusal to use that grey matter rattling around inside your skulls like an imitation snake in a jar of peanuts."

Quinn raised an eyebrow. "Did you get to insult your fellow soldiers, Coach Sylvester, or did you actually get in trouble for that?"

"Just my underlings," Sue said fondly. "I miss being able to order people into the line of fire." A few of them cleared their throats and she glared at them. "I already told you. Your parents were working at that lab. Can you seriously not put two and two together?" After hesitating, she admitted, "You know, that's a fair point. You go to this school. You probably can't."

"Did our parents do something to us?" Artie asked.

"Not on purpose. You got to take a little pre-screened field trip for Take Your Daughter, Son, Or Other To Work Day."

"'Other?'" Mercedes repeated, but then noticed Kurt glaring at Sue. "Oh."

"Long story short: that unstable energy that they were hoping would light up the East Coast? A good chunk of it got shot straight into you. Pure potential, realized with incredibly stupid costumes and names."

"My costumes are fine," Kurt said, still glowering.

"This round isn't bad," Sue admitted. "A little on the S&M side, but I can respect that. It's saucy. But it's not the first time you've tried this gig. You might have guessed that you've tested out your powers before, given that you all don't remember living in New York." She shot a glare at Finn, Kurt, and Rachel that dared them to say otherwise. When they stayed obediently silent, she continued. "Fifteen year olds with easy access to spandex in every color of the rainbow, well. It wasn't pretty."

"How come we don't remember living in New York?" Puck asked.

"For your own safety," Sue said. "Look, you've got experimental energy coursing through your veins and some dangerous people interested in what went on. It made sense to hide you."

"Why not tell us?" Rachel asked. "We can defend ourselves, and would be doing even better at it if we'd been properly trained. Hiding us and just hoping for the best was clearly a terrible plan. We shouldn't have hidden, we should have faced them down and solved this problem. All it's done this way is fester."

Sue shrugged, unimpressed with her argument. "You can't use your powers for very long, can you? Or control them all that well? Think about the real heroes you see on the news. The Human Torch can fly around the sky for hours without burning out. The Invisible Woman can manipulate her fields into doing practically anything, not just barely holding together until someone comes to her rescue." She looked around the group and took in their reactions. 

Rachel did the same and saw a full group of frowns. Kurt as he presumably remembered crumpling with a gushing nosebleed. Finn and his inadvertent mindreading. Artie's uncontrollable inventions, and Brittany's uncontrollable everything. Mike and Brittany's unreliable braking. Santana's fire form dying into embers, Mercedes losing her shields, Quinn not keeping in control after she thought she had things handled....

It was true. She and Tina were comfortable with their powers, but only because they'd barely pushed them. And just like Rachel had once said, Puck was the most reliably confident with what he could do, but he hardly matched up to some of the biggest heroes. What if he were stronger and faster than he'd currently shown? In ragged unison the group looked back up to Sue, hoping for an explanation.

"The energy inside you isn't just poorly understood, it's unstable," Sue explained.

"Are we going to blow up?" Brittany asked with wide eyes.

"That would suck," Finn agreed, looking discomfited.

"I could only be so fortunate," Sue said, which didn't reassure them much. "But it does mean that each and every one of you is currently walking around as a little derrick to other dimensions' energy wells until we figure out how to get you capped."

Artie, unsurprisingly, was the first one to follow that explanation to something like a logical conclusion. "So until your government guys figure out how to stabilize this energy, we have creepy bad guys after us that want access to unlimited power."

"Bingo, Christopher Reeve," Sue said. "And you've just figured out why one of the top agents in the world was assigned to this case." She watched everyone's reactions and chuckled at their fear. "After the annoyance of seeing you all on television last night, I have to say: your bewilderment and terror gives me strength." No one seemed to know how to respond and for a while they sat in silence.

It was Santana who snapped first. "Fuck this," she said, standing. Everyone half-turned to her. "Fuck this sideways with a pair of garden shears, you got me? I am through getting yanked around by the world."

"San," Brittany said with worried glances between her and Sue, "Coach Sylvester has a gun."

"Yeah? So shoot me," she said defiantly. Her hands spread wide like targets. 

Well, Rachel thought as she shrank down as far as she could, Santana certainly seemed to have perked up now that her parents were out of the room. Her apparent death wish didn't speak well to her overall mental state, however.

"Not gonna do it?" Santana asked like she'd proven a point.

"You're certainly feistier than usual," Sue said after a beat of studying her with a smile. "I can count on Boy George or Meghan McCain to occasionally find their spines and wave them at me, but you've pretty much been my reliable little toadie for as long as I've known you." Tension flared in her eyes, hard and sharp, and Rachel saw a woman who really had faced down foes gunning for her head. "Let me guess: your obvious emotional instability has to do with how you managed to out yourself to the greater Columbus metropolitan region last night."

Everyone flinched, and then turned to Santana. Brittany reached for her hand and squeezed it. "Oh my god," Rachel heard Kurt whisper. "She did. She kissed Brittany. Oh god."

Santana didn't sit down, though tears trickled down her cheeks. Her mascara was clearly left messily over from the night before, but much had been wiped off. The raccoon circles weren't as dramatic as they might have been and the black streaks tracking her tears weren't as dark. 

"Moving on," Sue began after a tense second of staring, but Santana spoke up again. Brittany's hand was an anchor and Rachel could see the tendons move in Santana's wrist when her grip tightened.

"No. Not 'moving on.' Because ever since I saw myself on the TV, I have been terrified of what would happen next. But while everyone else here was thinking about New York and superhero costumes and whatever bullshit ego trip you're on?" Santana laughed bitterly. "I was thinking about my _parents_ and what was going to happen when we went home again. So I guess I'm the one who put two and two together, McKinley education and all."

Sue's eyes narrowed. "Meaning?"

"You said our parents worked for a lab in New York." Santana's finger stabbed toward the door. "But Brittany's parents said they worked in Seattle. Tina's? New Mexico. All those people in D.C... get the picture?"

Sue pulled back. "Wait. When did they—"

Kurt and Finn began to smile. "Before you came in," Kurt said as he stepped smoothly in to support Santana. "Mr. Berry told everyone to give their _real_ histories. Should he not have done that?"

"Oh, hell," Sue said. Most of the group looked bewildered as they tried to put everything together, but a few started to clue in. Eyes widened.

"So," Santana said after the tension had built unbearably high, "did you just lie to us about where we got these powers, or are those people waiting in the choir room not really our parents?" Her tone of voice was strange, like she didn't know which answer she'd prefer.

Utter shock buffeted Rachel as she waited for Sue's answer. She'd never even considered that their masked memories might have hidden more than a change of address. Were her fathers not _hers?_ They were agents for some secretive government organization, who'd clearly lied about their backgrounds to every last person they met. If Sue was telling the truth about their powers and the risks they posed, it made perfect sense that agents would be asked to adopt her. Or... ordered to adopt her.

Fear dried her tongue. Her fingers tingled. "Ms. Sylvester?" Rachel asked weakly. "Which is it? Are they our parents?" Maybe this was her punishment for misbehaving, rather than a few short weeks of grounding. Was that why they were never home? Maybe they didn't feel like they wanted to be around a girl who wasn't really theirs, not like she was supposed to be.

After all, Shelby hadn't.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, the door number given to the adults turned out to be the choir room. Leroy explained how Sue had taken an opportunity to bug it during the process of constructing an implausibly large trophy case. Thanks to the constant sweeps she'd run since then, she was confident the room was secure. It was either that or her office, and a few short words made it very clear that she would not be offering that as an option.

Burt shifted awkwardly on his plastic seat and wondered if schools had shrunk since he graduated. He was pretty sure they'd had full-sized chairs back when he was wearing a football jersey. "So, uh," he said into the horribly uncomfortable silence that had settled over everyone. "Guess it makes sense, huh. All our kids wanting to be in this choir? I mean, to look at them, some don't really seem like the singing type."

"Like they were drawn together," agreed Tina's dad. Burt couldn't remember his name. Of course, the only connection they had was that their adopted, superpowered children were in the same extracurricular club, so he supposed he could be excused.

Leroy's partner—husband?—spoke up. Burt couldn't remember his name either, and that one he did feel guilty about. "I was specifically told not to consider this, but now that the cat is out of the bag, well... I wonder what those implanted memories did to keep them apart. I can't imagine they all used to be incredibly close, but they did get along before. They surely had little groups of friends that weren't repeated here." Given that they were all clearly close again, he allowed, "Not immediately, at least."

Carole hopped down from peering through the high windows. "The vans are all still gone. It looks like any journalists have been scared off for the rest of the day. Sue is good at that, I'll admit." She realized everyone had turned to her and that she wasn't on the same wavelength as the rest of the group, and laughed nervously. "Sorry. I just like to make sure that the perimeter's secure."

Burt smiled at her reassuringly. Once they were close to marriage, they'd independently contacted S.H.I.E.L.D. to let them know what was happening. Neither had been asking for permission, really; they'd been told that they could live normal lives in Lima and both thought they would soon be marrying a civilian. The flustered response they got was nearly an order to break up and they'd apparently set off quite a debate about what to do. Burt's heart attack answered the question for them: it might happen again and then they'd be in quite a spot with Kurt. S.H.I.E.L.D. told them _mazel tov_ , essentially, and pushed them toward the aisle and toward telling each other what was going on.

At first they'd just laughed at the unbelievable odds. Then they'd talked about their pasts and what had led them to Lima. Carole fretted sometimes and Burt let her. He couldn't imagine what her life as an agent had been like. He'd never lived outside a world of 401ks and timesheets.

"Speaking of memories," said... damn, said Mercedes' father. "Who went for that offer of getting some for themselves?"

Burt, smiling, nodded at him and saw Carole doing the same. Not once had he regretted opening up his mind to another father's memories of Kurt's childhood. "It's crazy to remember Kurt when he was just a little kid and know it's not really me seeing him, but man, I wouldn't give it up. He's great. I'm glad I feel like I get to see more of him, you know?"

"Mercedes had _quite_ the attitude," the man chuckled. "She didn't take anything from anyone." He sounded proud when he added, "You'd never know she didn't start off as mine."

Two attractive, very pale people that Burt hadn't met before smiled nostalgically. Unable to take it any more, Burt said, "Look, I'm sorry, but I can't remember half the names here, and we're all kind of in this together. I'm Burt Hummel, this is Carole Hudson-Hummel."

"Ben and Annie," said Ben said, nodding to make up for how they were too distant for a handshake. 

"Pierce," Annie added. "We're Brittany's."

"Jerry and Nancy Abrams," said a man in the next seat over. "Artie was such a good boy when he was growing up. So well-behaved."

Ben asked delicately, "How did he, ah...?"

Nancy sighed. "It was a car accident, like he remembered here, but it came after an explosion when his family was visiting Manhattan. So many people can get caught in those crossfires. A sedan went flying into the air and...." She shivered and forced herself to smile at the Pierce couple. "How was Brittany?"

They both laughed wryly and shook their heads. Annie sounded utterly in love with her daughter when she said, "An absolute handful. Every day she was dressing up, wanting to go to the zoo, coloring the walls. Anything that came to mind, she did. No filter at all. We were given a pretty thorough description of her powers, because it sounded like they were the most concerned about them out of anyone. If they started bleeding through, it would be cause for immediate action. That's why they told us to make sure she could spend time with...." Trailing off, she looked at one of the few couples not to be smiling over their children.

"I suppose we know how they were spending that time," said Mr. Lopez shortly. He saw Burt frowning at him, as there was something in the man's tone that had him uneasy. "What? You saw the news."

"We had a pretty big night at our place," Burt said. "Whatever you're talking about slipped my mind." It hadn't. He'd been surprised when he saw those two girls kissing, because he didn't know Kurt wasn't alone like that in the club. Before the boys had gotten home and had taken over the night with their discussion of New York and brotherhood, Santana had certainly made an impression.

"Everything they've been doing," Mr. Lopez said, gesturing at the Pierces. Burt didn't know his first name, and from the sound of his voice didn't care to learn it. 

"And what's wrong with 'what they've been doing?'" Burt asked shortly. Carole patted his arm and made noises like she would very much like for him to calm down. He wasn't going to calm down. They were supposed to be there for those kids, especially now that they might be in mortal danger, and he didn't want to hear someone getting self-righteous over the fact that their kid's wedding topper might have two dresses on it.

"They've been going off like half-cocked superheroes!" Mr. Lopez said angrily. "Or have you not paid any attention to why we're here?"

Burt hesitated and tried to wrench his brain into place. The others looked similarly confused. "Wait, what? I thought you were yelling over your girl, uh, liking girls."

Mrs. Lopez blinked at him. "What? Why would you think we'd care about that? We knew when we took Santana in that she needed to stay close to Brittany. They think it helped stabilize her powers, just in case."

"And it's not like she's our daughter," Mr. Lopez added dismissively.

"Actually," Leroy said, "she is."

Mr. Lopez shot him a dark look. "We were pressured into taking this assignment." His sharp glare moved to the right, to Leroy's partner. The man looked levelly back. "I didn't want it. The U.S. government needs to work a bit harder on their diversity efforts; they had very few Hispanic couples who both already had high-level clearance. My career has been on hold until Santana went to college. And now that she's gone and made a fool out of herself on television, we'll get blamed for not maintaining control of her. I might not just lose time to this project, I might lose an entire pay grade."

Burt and Carole were struck mute as they struggled for a response. Most of the other parents there looked similarly dumbstruck at their casual dismissal of Santana's adoption and the family they were supposed to have formed. Burt had speeches ready for homophobia. He'd inspected the problem from every angle, it felt like, and could offer any perspective people needed to hear. He didn't know how to respond to two adults who thought a vulnerable child was nothing more than a burden who might hurt their salaries. Nor did anyone else, from the silence that settled across the room.

A quiet voice spoke up. "You sound like Russell." Everyone turned to see the woman speaking. Burt figured she must be Quinn's mom; he knew from discussions of the club that she and the punk were the kids with single mothers, and it was easy to see who would have been paired with who. "I'm Judy," she added. "I've met some of you before, but you probably don't remember it." She did give the impression of being insubstantial, like a cotton shirt that had been worn too long and washed too many times. Prim and collected, she still seemed frayed at every end. 

"Quinn's mother," Mrs. Lopez placed. "Our girls are friends."

"I wish I'd encouraged her to spend more time with everyone," Judy said. "I think Quinn could use more friends. Good friends." Her smile wavered. "Russell just came home one day and told me that we were moving. He'd signed a contract for both of us. You're not supposed to be able to do that, but they were so rushed with trying to get everything sorted out that they just let him sign my name." Her hands smoothed her skirt. "He'd never gotten the promotions he wanted. I think he thought that joining this very important project would let him move up the ranks."

She hesitated before turning to Mercedes' father and saying, "Walter, isn't it?"

A bit surprised that she remembered, he nodded. "Yes, that's right."

"Your daughter came to see Quinn again this summer. It would be nice if they could stay close." Her thin smile wavered again, like it was tiring to hold. "Thank you for taking her in. It seemed like just as soon as we'd moved here, Russell started getting angry over little things. He began to think that maybe he'd made a mistake, and that maybe this would hurt his promotion chances instead of helping them. He didn't have much patience for Quinn... she was just a means to an end. When your boy told us that Quinn was pregnant...." Judy shrugged helplessly at Carole. "He was done. So long as one of us was still around to fulfill the contract, we wouldn't be thrown into prison. He left me here. I had to make up an excuse to tell Quinn, because I couldn't tell her the truth about her 'father.' It's been hard." With a look toward the Lopezes, she added, "But I've done my best."

Burt looked around and saw mixed reactions. Mike's parents seemed split, where his dad had sympathy for the _tough spot_ the Lopezes found themselves in while his mom clearly loved her son. He and Carole, the Pierces, the Berrys, and Walter were perhaps the most committed of everyone; he assumed that Mercedes' mom would be much the same. "Whatever you think about your careers," he said tightly toward the Lopezes and anyone else who didn't seem totally on board, "we're dealing with these kids' whole lives. They need us and we're in a lot better shape than any of them."

"And we'll fulfill our duties," Mrs. Lopez said. "I provide a safe home for my daughter, I talk to her after school, I deal with her _many_ behavioral issues...." She punctuated the last with an eyebrow pop. "She'll have a safe home until she graduates, she'll get her government scholarship or however they're going to handle higher education for these kids, and we'll move back to Colorado. _We_ will fulfill our contracts," she added with a pointed glance at Judy. "And our child will never wonder where she's sleeping tonight."

As Judy flinched, Puck's mom spoke up. "Yeah, I got involved with that, too. Her, I mean: Quinn. Boy, was that ever a mess. What kind of a group would dump a bunch of kids in this town and then turn them all into such a soap opera when they were the ones deciding what was going on in their heads?"

Carole frowned. "You really think they changed them that much? If you think they _made_ Finn and Quinn date each other, and then _made_ her and Puck...." She trailed off as everyone followed that to its horrifying conclusion. "I saw S.H.I.E.L.D. do some brutal things," she eventually continued, voice shaking. "But I can't even fathom that they would mindcontrol two children into having sex."

"No, no," said Leroy. "Look, I don't know exactly what happened, but you're right, we wouldn't. I think they just planted some very strong suggestions in people's heads when they placed the false memories. Finn didn't want to date Rachel, he wanted to date Quinn. Hell, that surged up again this past year, remember? Believe me, we heard all about that drama from our little girl. But in the end, that fell apart again. Right?"

"That's still coming very close to crossing a line," Carole said. "These poor kids."

"Yeah," Burt said unhappily, thinking back to how Finn kept saying that he didn't want to go back to where he'd started. It was one thing to allow a psychic to mess around in your head to just implant good stuff, like his memories of Kurt, but they'd clearly changed so much more with the kids. Once they started messing with a person's head, who knew how far they'd go?

"So I suppose we'll just wait, now," Tina's dad said when it became apparent that they were going to be stuck in there as Sue told their children whatever she wanted to. By that point, they could have discussed any amount of information.

"Suppose so," said Puck's mom.

Burt shot her an annoyed look before he could help it, and then reined himself in. She'd said absolutely nothing wrong. He didn't know if she'd let the psychics go to work on her memories, but still, she clearly cared about her kid. Her son. Puck. That obnoxious, arrogant, trouble-making kid that Burt just flat-out didn't _like._

Maybe he didn't have a good reason for it, but he was a dad. He didn't need reasons.

* * *

Though only a few seconds had passed since Rachel's question about their parents, it felt like hours. "Tell them," Sue snapped to Kurt and Finn. "You've clearly been itching to spill these extremely classified beans ever since you walked in here."

After a silent exchange, Kurt nodded and Finn stood. He adjusted his shirt nervously and turned to face everyone. "Yeah, okay. So I can read minds, which you knew, and Kurt and I dug up a bunch of memories last night. They're probably in there for you, too, and you just need to find the right way to—"

"Speed it up," Santana snapped, "or is all that lard weighing you down?"

Finn glared at her and looked ready to say something else, but managed to collect himself with a pointed look from Kurt. "The two of us remembered just enough about our family to know... the people in that choir room aren't our parents." Rachel felt as if she'd taken a sledgehammer to the chest; she hadn't simply lost her breath, but was in physical pain. She could hear gasps, moans, whispered protests. Quinn and Santana simply stared. "But they love us," Finn continued. "I swear."

"They really do," Kurt added, rising to take a spot next to him. "Finn showed me and I'm completely convinced. They're still good people. The details might be different, but they're just who we thought." He took in their disbelief. "I know it's hard to accept. But we really did live in New York. It's not just Coach Sylvester telling us. I remembered, Finn and Rachel remembered, and Finn knows those memories are true. And he also knows it's true that our parents are good, caring—"

"You mean your 'parents' are good people," Quinn retorted and everyone turned to her slowly, like they were moving through water. "Or did you scan everyone when you walked in? Do they actually love all of us?" A thin, bitter laugh escaped her. "Because I've gotta say, everything is suddenly making a lot more sense to me."

"I... no, I didn't scan anyone else," Finn admitted. "But I could. It'll be the same way for everyone, come on."

"My parents love me," Mercedes said loudly before anyone could add more. "That is my dad in there, my mom is going to fly back tomorrow from visiting my grandma, and they are my real family."

"They are your real family," Kurt agreed very gently. "They just weren't always that way."

Her lower lip quivered. "Don't, Kurt."

She'd already gone through gaining and losing a mother, Rachel thought as she tried to steady her breathing. It had come close to breaking her. Her chest still ached. Had she already lost fathers in New York? Or... or another father and another mother? Mothers? 

"No way," Artie said, although his voice lacked conviction. "Guys, Sue's just messing with us."

"Yeah," Puck said, just as uncertain.

"I'm not the one telling this story any more," Sue replied and gestured to the standing duo. "Blame them."

"They tried to make families close to what we started with," Finn continued. "Rachel, you probably had dads in New York. Puck, I'm betting you had a single mom. I don't know, I haven't remembered anything about them yet, but I'd put money on it."

Mike frowned at both of them. He didn't seem quite as relieved as Quinn and Santana, but he was in far better shape than Mercedes' heartbroken end of the emotional scale. "Did they expect us to start hanging out again?"

That made Sue step back into command of the conversation. The very idea seemed to offend her. "Of course not. You were supposed to keep away from each other, at least more than a few at a time. And instead, you insisted on coming together like an ant hill that refused to be stomped out." Her foot kicked idly at the polished floor. "And believe me, I did try."

Most people seemed to accept that, but Mike spoke up again. "Did the government try to keep their parents from getting married?" he asked, gesturing between Kurt and Finn. "If people were supposed to stay apart, and they just randomly happened to, uh...." He smiled apologetically at them both. "Sorry. I'm just trying to figure out just how creepy and invasive this all is."

"It didn't just 'happen,'" Finn cheerfully corrected, slinging his arm around Kurt's shoulders. He pulled him close, which gave Kurt a pained expression and made the rest of the group look more than a little confused. Rachel, at least, found some small humor in knowing what Finn was really doing. "He was totally hot for my bod."

"Oh please stop," Kurt whimpered.

Finn did not stop. It was remarkable how well he was dealing with the entire situation, even if he had been given more time to process it. Rachel still felt dizzy. "Probably thought about me coming home after football practice, all sweaty...."

"I am _begging_ you to stop," Kurt said, trying to squirm away.

"Dude," Puck said sharply and leaned forward as if he were a breath away from lunging at them. "Drop it."

Finn blinked and let Kurt push free of him. "Okay," he said, glancing between everyone like they would have the explanation for Puck's strange reaction. Rachel shrugged helplessly; they were all on edge. It might be as simple as that. He looked back to Puck, concentration pressing on his brow, and then froze like he'd seen something terrible in the boy's face.

Puck stared back, swallowed, and shook his head once.

As Rachel looked between them, Sue slapped her hands against her thighs and stood. "Well, I think we've said about enough. Jackie Chan, the short answer to your question is: we tried our best to keep you apart and you still came together like a highly annoying blood clot. I insulted you, terrorized you, tried to use members of your own group against one another just to twist the knife, and you still came out of it calling yourselves an extremely dysfunctional, sex-crazed family."

"But we don't have families," Santana said thinly. Her smile was heartbreaking.

"You do, Santana," Rachel said. She was a leader. She had to lead, even if that meant forcing down her pain in favor of the people who sounded to need more help. "I... what Kurt and Finn told us is to hard to accept. I still want to cry over the very idea, and I want to be able to say they're wrong. But if we can make it through last night, we can make it through anything. Including this. I tried to help you when you almost burned down your house," she added. "If we're going to get through this, we need to let people help." She glanced to Finn for support, but he was still staring at Puck over whatever he'd read there. "Your parents—"

"We don't have families," Santana repeated, each word hard.

"You have me," said a soft voice beside Santana, and she looked down at Brittany like she'd forgotten that they were still holding hands. Brittany smiled tremulously. "I know this is hard and scary, but things can be that way and still be amazing. And I was mad at you for what you said in the car, sure, but I don't want you to be mad at yourself."

"Why would I be mad at myself?" Santana said lightly, like sun glinting off ice. "I'm great. Everyone else has their big, stupid problems."

"Because you think your parents are mad at you because you kissed me," Brittany said simply. "And you think you shouldn't have done it." Santana didn't say anything to that, and Brittany didn't seem to know what else to say. She started stroking the back of Santana's hand with her free fingers, gently, like a cat.

"Screw them if they have a problem with you," Quinn said, turning around to face her. "We can be better than our parents." She laughed disbelievingly and said, "You know what's great? If this is true? We can imagine that our _real_ parents would never treat us this way."

"There's nothing good about this, Quinn," Mercedes said and Rachel reached back to squeeze her hand in complete understanding. Kurt, who'd hurried away from Finn, clasped his hands around their wrists and held on.

"That's a lot easier for you to say," Quinn said with a shrug.

"We need to talk," Finn said suddenly and loudly. He'd never taken his eyes off Puck, and Puck hadn't dared look away. "Right now." 

Sue smirked, like she knew the answer to whatever was happening between them, and then brightened further when she turned to the door and the man who'd just entered. "William! I'm glad to see you got my message once you'd finished showing all the grace of Richard Nixon in front of the camera."

Will Schuester gawked at the group in the gymnasium, then put his focus on his long-time nemesis. His smile looked like he was holding back hysterical laughter as he inspected her military ensemble. "Nice costume, Sue. I take it you had something to do with this?" Tightly, he turned his attention to the kids and added, "And guys, I was kind of surprised to see _everything._ "

"It's a very long story, Mr. Schuester," Rachel sighed.

Still lost in their own world, Puck shouted to Finn, "Drop it! We'll talk later!"

"No, not later, because—" Finn broke off when three people peered around Will: the normal humans who'd accompanied them on their trip to Columbus. He looked between them, then Puck, back to them, and sounded ready to punch something. "Perfect. Just perfect."

"How'd things go after I left?" Blaine called out from around Will's shoulder.

"They've been better," Kurt said weakly with a look to where Brittany was still comforting Santana and had pulled Quinn into the mixture. Mike looked distant as Tina tried to talk to him. Artie was zoning out. Rachel had latched onto Mercedes, a fellow sympathizer with the idea that they had _their_ parents whom they absolutely would not give up, and they clung together like mutual life preservers.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Blaine said after a painfully long stretch where everyone at the door seemed more than a little confused about what they'd walked into. Will kept shrugging, clearly telling the kids that he didn't know what was happening.

"Why's _he_ here?" Puck asked. Finn glared at him. When he tried to drag Puck off to the side, though, Puck only snorted as his superpowered body resisted any attempt Finn made. "Hey, baby," he added belatedly, waving at Lauren while Finn tried futilely to move Puck even an inch across the gym floor. 

"Thanks for following my orders, William," Sue said as she nodded to the three newcomers. "I contacted their parents so they'd be sure to release them to you. See? I can make things easy for you when I'm so inclined."

"Easy for me?" Will sputtered. "And I didn't 'follow orders,' I saw my kids—and him—putting their lives at risk on television, and then you said that you knew something about it! That they needed to come here for the sake of their personal safety! That I should look up their addresses and... sorry, I just wasn't sure how to include you," Will said when he saw that Blaine had been looking a bit put off ever since he was slapped with 'and him.'

"Well, let's let this discussion happen among everyone," Sue said, gesturing among the group. "I'm sure there are some people who really want to catch up. William, would you mind getting some refreshments for our guests? All of their parents are waiting in your choir room, and are probably getting more than a little bored. Hopefully they haven't started ripping apart your pathetic dominion out of boredom."

"What?" Will asked, his voice spiraling ever higher.

For the first time since everything had started, Rachel felt utterly out of control. Her fathers were fakes. Santana needed help but didn't want hers. Her life was a lie. Sue Sylvester had effectively taken over command of her team, she couldn't meet the media who wanted to talk to her, and she had no idea why Finn was still trying to drag Puck off somewhere. 

"I might be able to get a little fun out of this, after all," Sue said proudly as she looked around the room.


	16. Life Plans

"Seriously?" Finn demanded as Puck gave up and walked toward privacy with him. He knew Puck was only doing it so Finn would leave him alone, but he'd take the opportunity no matter how it came. "How the hell long has this been going on?"

Reading people could be like listening to their thoughts on a telephone with an echo on the line, but it could also be like curling up inside their hearts and feeling whatever they felt. When he'd looked at Puck, he'd experienced an overwhelming physical attraction to Kurt like it was from his own mind. It took him a few horrified seconds to realize it wasn't so. Anything would be better than actually feeling _that way_ about his own twin brother who he could remember from first grade, but it coming from Puck was barely an improvement.

"Look," Puck said defensively, "it's not serious. I'm just a sex—"

"Don't compare yourself to a shark again, or a dinosaur, or a cheetah, or whatever."

"Cheetahs have no stamina," Puck said.

"Whatever! Don't do it!" Finn saw a few people looking curiously at them and lowered his voice. "Since when are you...?"

"Since him," Puck grumbled. "Being all flexible." Gross. So gross. Seeing his reaction, Puck added, "You know I stare at whoever, whenever. I always have. What's the big deal?"

"The big deal," Finn repeated tightly, "is that he is happy and dating someone, and you are not going to screw that up for him."

Puck pulled back. "And why would you assume I'd screw them up?"

Well, that was one hell of a softball. "Let me think," Finn said. "I'm sure I'll come up with something. Oh, yeah: you getting my girlfriend pregnant when _we_ were happy and dating. Or going for Rachel when it was me and her. Yeah, you're super trustworthy."

"Nothing happened with Rachel," Puck said harshly, but denying that only made the Quinn affair all the more obvious. Mute with frustration for a few red-faced seconds, Puck said, "And you're really one to talk about cheating." He saw Finn's scowl, smiled darkly, and asked, "Want me to call Sam over? Have him go all judgmental on your holier-than-thou ass?"

"That was different," Finn said with annoyance. "You were just doing it because you could."

"Yeah, that's totally it," Puck snorted. "You had a good reason and I didn't, because you're always right. Screw you." He saw something in Finn's expression and rolled his eyes. "Calm down. I wasn't serious; you're not hot."

"...Hey!" Finn sputtered. He jabbed a finger at Puck's collar bone; the boy looked down at it, then back up, and raised an eyebrow. "Just stay the hell away from him. You ruin love for people. It's kind of your deal."

Offense and hurt rolled off the boy. Puck clenched his jaw. "You know, if I punched you in the face right now? It'd go right through to the other side."

"Oh hey," Finn said and pulled on his telekinesis. A rush of psychic energy solidified, drew back, and socked Puck across the chin. It hit with the force of a strong slap for a normal person, not enough to draw notice from the people in the bleachers, but held the threat of more. "I can do that, too."

Puck practically snarled, "And who the hell are you to tell me that I _can't_ —"

"I'm his brother," Finn said. "Like, seriously. Blood. Not 'step.' Twins. There's a lot about our lives that we still don't remember, but I remember that. He's finally found someone, he's happy, and I'm not going to let you screw things up for my brother like you screwed them up for me. Got it?"

He could sense Puck still fighting back the urge to punch him. Finn readied a telekinetic shield just in case. Unclenching his fist was so difficult that Puck felt pained, and he laughed without humor when he managed it. "Whatever. In case you've forgotten, I've got a girlfriend. I dig her, I'm not gonna cheat on her, end of story. And how the hell are you twins?"

"They don't have to be identical," Finn said defensively. "Just... stay away from him, okay? You're only going to hurt him if you say anything. He's happy and you're the guy who used to throw him in the trash."

"So are you," Puck fired back. "I thought we were friends. Guess this is what you really think of me. Good to know."

"I'm just trying to look out for—" Finn cut off in the face of Puck's upraised finger and sighed heavily as the boy stormed over to talk to Lauren. Even after that poor attempt, he just knew now that he _had_ to look out for Kurt. He'd done a shitty job in Lima a lot of the time, but something stronger than guilt was reminding him to do better at that work. He was supposed to smooth the way for Kurt. He just was.

Ugh, what a mess. He could still feel Puck's anger from across the gym. But then, it was a dark day for everyone, full of rage and sorrow. Puck would get over it. Surely his temper wasn't worse than Rachel's heartbreak, or Santana's... yikes, Finn thought as he did a quick sweep of her mind. No one could be worse than Santana's _everything_ , that was for sure. Her face didn't match the hurricane inside; she was rigid and masked where she sat on the bleachers. Finn flinched at the sheer force of her pain, but Brittany and Quinn were attending to Santana, and Rachel and Mercedes were weepier and closer. Probably better to sit next to his girlfriend, he thought as he scooted next to Rachel. "Hey."

She had such big eyes. They made her performances so dramatic. Now he could see each tear standing in them, it seemed, and every last one was like a punch to his gut. Rachel's voice trembled when she asked, "Finn, when you and Kurt left, did you know about this? Did you not tell me?" 

Mercedes looked up, like the wrong answer from Finn could provide her with someone conveniently close to blame. 

"No. We realized it when we were standing right in front of them, arguing. Kurt ran out. Burt had to go find him. It was pretty bad." He squeezed Rachel's shoulder and then looked to where Kurt had gone. The three normal students were still being grilled by the adults and Kurt hovered around them like a moth in anticipation of the first free second. Finn smiled lopsidedly and knew he'd done the right thing. It wasn't that Blaine was his very favorite person in the world. There were parts of the guy that seemed cool and parts that seriously bugged; just because his brother was dating him, it didn't mean that he ignored Column B. But he made Kurt happy.

Puck wouldn't. Puck even coming _near_ them could explode all of that happiness in their faces.

Yeah. He'd done the right thing.

Secure in that knowledge, Finn wrapped his arms more wholly around Rachel, mindful of her bruises, and let her use him as a pillar in the storm.

* * *

Kurt could deal with being an untapped energy source into another dimension and having various unknown pursuers because of it. Truly, he could. He'd spent the last month wondering if he was a mutant (they'd gotten over that idea pretty quickly), a government experiment (as it turned out, not _quite_ ), or some magical being (that had been too much to hope for). The specifics of what Sue had told them were new, but he'd had time to accept the idea that he was something... kind of weird. He'd even gotten used to putting himself in incrementally more danger—with occasional huge leaps—to protect others who couldn't protect themselves.

It had just been a day and a half, though, since Blaine had learned the truth about their costumes and heroics. It had been even less time since he'd been put at risk thanks to Kurt going to Columbus. And Kurt was still faced with the discussion where he would announce that everything in his life was a lie.

This, put very bluntly, was going to suck.

Eventually Sue finished talking to the trio, with Will running interference as best he could. Kurt lunged for Blaine and dragged him away to find any spot of privacy. The gymnasium was like some horrible teamwork-building session. Everyone had paired off: Mike and Tina, Finn and Rachel, Brittany and Santana. Puck made a beeline for Lauren, like Sam did for Mercedes. Quinn had apparently been knocked out of the popular girl trio when it became a Brittany-and-Santana duo, but even she had latched onto Artie as the last remaining solo person there. In short: there were way too many people and way too many discussions going on. "Coach Sylvester?" Kurt asked, risking interrupting the conversation where Will looked two seconds away from gesturing frantically like a muppet. "Could we use your office? It's a little loud in here."

Sue scowled, but hesitated just before "no" actually left her mouth. "Lock up when you leave," she said, handing him a keychain, "and I do videotape everything that goes on in there."

Fine, it wasn't like they were going to strip down on Sue Sylvester's desk. "Thank you," he said and quickly left before she could change her mind. "Come on," he said as he lead Blaine out of the gym with purposeful strides. Blaine followed without comment and they were soon in Sue's office. Mindful of the hidden cameras, he took one of the guest chairs and motioned for Blaine to do the same, rather than even coming near her seat.

"So," Blaine said, exhaling and looking more than a little exhausted. "This was quite a day."

Kurt grimaced. Yes, he was sure it had been, and it was only going to get worse. 

"I got home and thankfully, my parents had already gone to bed," Blaine said. It sounded like a good start, but Kurt had the distinct impression that the story would have an unpleasant ending. "Unfortunately, some of their friends did see the news. They checked their messages when they got up, and, well... I had an earlier morning than I would have liked."

"Sorry," Kurt said. This was a conversation that would require an awful lot of apologies.

"Clips are already up on YouTube," Blaine said. "New teams always get some attention when they make their debuts."

Kurt thought of those clips, of the awful YouTube commentariat discussing their appearances and worthiness and general _everything_ , and found himself saying "Sorry" again. 

"Why are you apologizing?" Blaine asked. "I... look, we still need to talk about the whole superhero _thing_ , but I chose to go with you all to Columbus. I made the decision to run up in front of those cameras. It's not your fault that my parents were upset over me going so far away without telling them." He added in very measured tones, like it was something he'd practiced, "And considering that things clearly weren't what you expected to be facing... it's not your fault that I was so upset last night. I shouldn't have gotten so angry over being scared; I'm sure you were scared, too. You didn't need to have me piling more guilt on top of you." Blaine frowned when every word of his made Kurt look worse, not better. "What's wrong?"

"Something else happened after you left," Kurt said. Now that the moment was there, he had no idea how he was supposed to tell that everything they had was constructed upon a lie. "Something that... wow. All right. This is hard."

"What happened?" Blaine asked, sounding very nervous. When Kurt only fumbled for words and couldn't find that perfect one to start his explanation, he ventured, "Okay, then... who was there with you when it happened?"

"Um, Finn and Rachel. It was right after you drove off." That seemed to satisfy Blaine, and even though it was a strange starting point, he took it. "Well, Finn and I began to remember some things from our dreams. It turns out that we were having the same dreams, and that they weren't dreams at all."

A worried line etched itself between Blaine's eyebrows. "Did you see something dangerous coming to town?"

"No. No, it wasn't of the future. It was of the past." He was there, right on the edge. He just needed to step over. He could do this. After all, nothing needed to change from what they'd already discussed, right? The future was still set; it was only the past that was in flux. "We. Um." Kurt took a deep breath and looked at the walls surrounding them, at all the plaques and trophies and pictures of Sue Sylvester. 

Her voice suddenly filled his head. It was a good thing he was just imagining it; as intriguing as Finn's powers could be, he wouldn't really want to hear the woman's thoughts. "Good lord, Ladyface, you're going in more circles than a carousel pony. A pink one, with pretty little flowers in its drool-stained mane. And yes, I called you Ladyface. Because I know it annoys you, and if you can't sack up and do this, then you deserve to have me irritating you like one tiny piece of sand lodged directly—"

"Finn and I are really brothers and we're actually twins and I used to live in New York and the government wiped my memories and I only got moved to Lima before sophomore year and my name is actually Kurt Hutton." Kurt had to take another deep breath; he was dizzy. "I'm adopted and aliens want to use me as an energy well into other dimensions. Well, maybe not aliens. Someone. They might not be aliens."

Blaine sat very still and remained absolutely silent.

"But I still want to do everything that we talked about before, and move to New York, and argue about getting a cat." Obviously, the answer would be no; lint brushes couldn't possibly pick up every last piece of hair. "Well," Kurt tittered nervously, "I suppose it would be moving _back_ to New York for me. I used to live on the Upper West Side. But I definitely couldn't afford that place for a long time."

Blaine blinked. His mouth opened, worked wordlessly, and closed.

"Okay," Kurt said and smiled like he was pulling teeth. "Now you say something."

"That," Blaine said, and took a long time to continue, "was not what I expected to hear. I'm not sure what I did expect, but it wasn't that."

"I'm still the same person," Kurt said into the silence. "I just have a different name and... and family, and all right, an entirely different background, but I'm still me. I didn't get here like I thought, is the only change."

Clearly unable to process everything just yet, Blaine nodded like nothing more than a reflex motion. That time, Kurt let him take as long as he liked to respond. "You've had a month to get used to this," Blaine finally said. "I know this last part is new to you, but for a month you've been hiding superpowers, putting yourself in danger, and lying to me about it. I know why you did it. I don't blame you for trying to keep that a secret. But it was already a lot to take in."

Kurt bit his lower lip. For the first time in weeks he was aware of his clothes changing. He let it go, and a Demeulemeester vest morphed into a Gaultier coat that looked too hot for the calendar, which faded into a simple grey jacket and settled there. Blaine noticed the shifting outfits, of course; by the end he stared openly. "Band of Outsiders," Kurt said when he looked down at his final outfit. "Appropriate, I suppose. I'm sorry. Again."

"I'll be fine," Blaine said. "I just need a little bit to be fine." He saw Kurt's stricken expression and said, "I'm not angry. I'm... dizzy."

Dizzy was definitely better than angry, Kurt thought with relief. "Oh, good. Not that you're dizzy, but... well, I've been there. I practically lost my mind last night. There Finn and I were, about to get in trouble over the news report, and we realized that our parents... weren't." The pain he'd felt began to come back to him, settling into his eyes like a shadow. "I ran. I just went invisible and ran, even though I could barely walk by that point. I ran and ran, with no idea of where I was planning to end up. In the end I was so exhausted that I passed out in the middle of the cemetery. Dad had to track me down." Kurt managed a small smile. "He knew where to look."

"You called him 'Dad,'" Blaine pointed out. He sounded uncertain of what else to say.

"Yeah," Kurt agreed softly. "Finn showed me what he feels, and he's my dad. Maybe not my first, but he is. I'm also going to need time to get used to all this, but at least I know I have that."

A shadow fell across Blaine's expression, too, and he looked troubled as he worked through everything. When he looked back up, his eyes were filled with concern. "You ran away?"

"I didn't know what I was doing," Kurt said, but didn't deny it.

"I'm sorry," Blaine said and stood to close the distance between them. "This is hard for me, but I'm on the outside, looking in. If I think it's a lot to take, it can't be anything compared to what you've gone through." He pulled Kurt in for a hug. It hurt, and Blaine stepped free when Kurt couldn't fight back a tiny whimper. "Are you okay?"

"I threw myself at the street so a car wouldn't land on me," Kurt admitted, flexing his sore muscles. "I guess you wouldn't have seen that. I'm a little banged up."

"This part," Blaine admitted after looking at Kurt with concern, "I might not be all right with."

"Rachel and I were keeping each other safe, and... and don't worry," he said. "I told you, nothing has changed. This isn't what I want. Everyone was going, and a lot of innocent people could have gotten hurt just because they were in the way of superpowered meatheads who thought they were better than them. I couldn't let that happen. But that doesn't mean I'm going to break into the garage to craft my own Batsignal, all right?" He saw Blaine's bemused expression and added, laughing gently, "Sam talks about superheroes a lot. And Finn won't shut up now, for obvious reasons."

"I didn't think you'd heard about Batsignals on your own." The tension ebbed, so palpably that it even felt easier to move, and Blaine's smile looked totally, wholly real. "It was very brave of you to do that to help those people."

"I wasn't much help last night," Kurt admitted. "But we make a good team, overall, and a lot of people are still alive. In the meantime, until I'm focusing on stages and subway tokens and terrible upstairs neighbors, I...."

"You like this," Blaine guessed and Kurt nodded almost shamefully. 

"Really, don't worry," Kurt added. "I'm betting that my superheroic wings will have been very much clipped after last night. No more sneaking out, no more adventures...."

"No more costume?" Blaine asked. Kurt saw a hungry edge in his eyes, and Blaine grinned when he'd been found out. "It's just a very intriguing, very well-constructed, very... tight costume. I don't think you should let it go to waste."

Blood rushed to his cheeks and Kurt fought back a laugh. "Um. Well." Oh, he felt like a fool. He'd first considered ease of movement when piecing together his outfit. Once the fundamental structure was in place, he'd added a variety of functional accessories to give himself some style. It wasn't until Sue had called them just short of S&M gear that he'd realized that, from an outside perspective, his costume did look more than a bit provocative. "I do still have my costume," he answered. "And my mask. Do you like the mask?"

"I can't decide. We'll have to research this," Blaine said, and leaned carefully in for a kiss. "Very thoroughly." He kissed him again. "Investigate our options."

"Okay," Kurt said with a goofy, broad grin.

"And just think," Blaine said, risking a careful hold on Kurt that avoided any bruised areas, "if you did lose New York in your past, well, just look at it as all having happened so that we could meet." He leaned in for another kiss, but Kurt pulled back. It felt like a lens was snapping into focus after drifting lazily loose.

"Finn is my _brother_ ," Kurt reminded him, quiet but intent. "I can only remember flashes of my old life, yet, but I lost out on years of knowing that someone shared my birthday. And god, I love my parents here, but I wouldn't have even known that there was someone else waiting for me to remember them."

"I'm sorry," Blaine said immediately. "Of course you're right. That was an incredibly selfish thing to say. What we have is wonderful, but nothing could possibly make up for having your family ripped apart."

"But it's definitely a plus to everything that happened," Kurt added, smiling so he would know the tension had fled. Blaine leaned in again and Kurt caught the glint of glass. Pulling back, Kurt cleared his throat, nodded to the tiny camera in the corner, and said, "And we're done with the kissing."

"Definitely done with it in this room," Blaine agreed. "...On the way back, let's talk about that costume some more."

Giggling hurt with all of his bruises, but Kurt couldn't force himself to stop.

* * *

Sitting next to Rachel had been comforting, as she knew what Mercedes was going through. But then she folded into Finn's arms and practically disappeared. Mercedes understood; Finn Hudson was a big, solid guy, and sometimes you just wanted something strong to hold onto. Kurt had been there, calmer than either of them, but then he had to make sure that Sue hadn't traumatized Blaine. She understood that, too. No one could leave someone they cared about to the tender mercies of Sue Sylvester. She couldn't blame Rachel for turning away from Mercedes, nor Kurt for leaving the bleachers. Still, she felt a moment of sharp abandonment until she saw her own strong set of arms headed right in her direction.

"Hey," Sam said, sweeping her into a hug. "You doing okay? Were your parents mad?"

He didn't know, she thought with fresh shock. Her life would be a constant string of explaining to people that nothing fit right, that nothing was as it should be. Mercedes tried to control herself, but her lip began to wobble. Seeing that, Sam sat her right back down on the nearest empty region of the bleachers and pulled her head onto his shoulder. "Thanks," Mercedes said when she'd sniffled out the worst of her pain.

"What's wrong?" he asked. His fingertips traced light patterns on her cheek. "Are you in a lot of trouble?" 

He'd come to her house in the hours between deciding to go to Columbus and actually leaving. Sam seemed so enthralled by the idea of everything: the costumes, the powers, the fights. He'd touched everything in her room that had had anything to do with the team, and kept asking if he could take this or that. If he sounded happy about anything she'd learned, if he didn't act like it was a big deal... Mercedes found herself freezing up. Being alone would be better than him treating everything about her past like some big adventure.

"Come on," he prodded. "You can tell me."

With a deep breath, she did: a life she didn't remember, parents who weren't hers. Sam's eyes grew progressively wider as she relayed the whole unbelievable tale. "So that's it," she finished and wiped at her nose. The back of her hand came away wet. "That's what Sue told us, and Kurt and Finn backed her up. I used to live in New York. I'm a weird government freak and things want to kill me." The last words stuck in her throat like something hard and sharp, and it hurt when she choked out, "And my family's not real."

"Hey," Sam said. "Hey, hey. Don't say that."

Okay, maybe that was too dramatic. They sure acted like they loved her, and she felt like a sister to her little siblings. She supported adoption _in theory_ , and even before she'd ever shared a friendly word with Quinn, she felt in her heart and soul that she was doing the right thing by having her baby. But it was something that happened to someone else. "I just... I can't deal with the idea that my parents aren't my parents," Mercedes said, sniffling.

"They're your parents," Sam said. "They are."

"But—"

"Ma and Pa Kent were totally Superman's parents," he said. "For his whole life."

Dumbstruck with the sheer absurdity of his words, Mercedes teetered on the line between humor and offense. Her life had absolutely been ripped to shreds; all of their lives had. It wasn't a time for jokes, it was a time for howling in grief. She wanted to have someone appreciate the magnitude of what she was going through... but on the other hand, it was such a perfectly _him_ thing to say. She started crying, but it was through laughter. "You are the biggest dork in the world, Sam Evans," Mercedes said and flung her arms around him. "Thank you."

"Glad to help," he said and held her until she let go. When Mercedes pulled away, he retrieved a crumpled napkin from his pocket and offered it to her. "It's clean," he said, and so she took the rough paper and wiped away her tears. "They gave us some extras, and sometimes it's good to have a napkin on you. Like now." 

"This is just hard," she whispered when her face was mostly dry.

Thankfully, he stopped talking about napkins. "Mercedes, I've met your parents. Your dad made sure that I wasn't going to hurt you, _and_ I know you told him about... you know, why prom was pretty low-key. He didn't care, he just wanted to know what I was like. He seems like a good person who really cares about you. So does your mom."

It was true: there were a whole lot of people who were a whole lot worse off than she was. Well. With the exception of being some sort of freaky energy tower that aliens wanted to suck dry, but honestly, she could not even deal with that just yet. Mercedes said, "This is a whole bunch of stuff to handle in one day."

"I get that," Sam said. "But, it's like... training. When you work muscles for the first time, it really hurts. But then you force yourself to push hard again the next day, and man, it might hurt even more. It hurts less after that, though, and pretty soon it doesn't hurt at all. You just have to get through it and then you're good." That was so not the right metaphor to use and he seemed to pick up on that. "Do you want me to talk to you?" Sam asked. "Or just hug you? Or leave you alone?"

Mercedes managed to smile. Being asked if she wanted space was an entirely different feeling than being ignored. "Just hug me for a while, and then maybe I'll want a little me time."

"You got it," Sam said and locked his arms around her again. "I think you're great, and...." Trailing off at her glance, he said, "Right, I'm just hugging you. Not talking."

"You are the best," Mercedes said and went quiet against him. For now, she could just wait and hope that every few minutes, things would hurt a little less than they did.

* * *

"It's funny," Mike said very slowly, as if he were having to first find every word in the dictionary. "But I kind of understand what Quinn was saying. Things make more sense."

"How can this make sense?" Tina wondered. Sure, they had all been wondering where they got their powers. That explanation all hung together. But living in New York and coming from different families was a crazy, Twin Peaks-esque hairpin turn in their own personal stories. 

"I'm scared of my dad," Mike said. Tina's widening eyes made his do the same, and he quickly added, "Not that I think he'll hit me or anything, nothing like that. I'm just so scared of disappointing him, or not being what he wants me to be. Sometimes I wondered if he cared more whether I was happy or whether he'd be." He considered his words. "Parents are supposed to want what's best for their kids. It doesn't feel like he does. So, yeah. It makes sense."

He'd said iffy lines about his father now and then, but Tina had gotten a different view of his mother. Just as she was about to say something to that effect, he sighed and continued, "But Mom still feels like... like Mom. Is that weird? Should she not? She's ridden me pretty hard about school, too, but it just felt different. Like she cared that I wasn't disappointing myself."

"No matter what anyone says," Tina said, "my family's my family." She said it fast and hard. "Even if you're upset over your dad, at least you still know that your mom is on your side?" What seemed like an obvious answer clearly wasn't. Mike's face fell, and Tina's echoed a second later. Of course that wouldn't be a solution. That was like asking his mother to choose between his father and son, and the risk of posing that question was that he might not like the answer. "Whatever happens," she said, "just know that we'll figure it out together. Okay?"

"I am seriously lucky to have you," Mike said after he looked at Tina with something close to wonder.

"You sorta are," she giggled and kissed him. Her life was still a wreck, but it was easier to have something else to focus on. Maybe, by the time they figured out what to do with Mike, her life would have magically fallen into place. That'd be just terrific.

* * *

Sometimes Santana didn't want to say anything. She talked a lot at school, after all. That was where she faced down anyone who tried to challenge her, covered her hurt with sharp words, and made sure she acted like a girl who deserved all the attention in the world. Brittany had learned that one of the things Santana liked most when they were alone, in the still moments, was to just be quiet.

Sometimes they talked about the squad or friends or favorite television shows. Santana let down her defenses and _smiled_ when she talked about things she liked, like she never did around anyone else. But a lot of times she just curled up next to Brittany on the bed, relaxed, and let all her shields fall away. She didn't frown, she didn't go tense, and she didn't have to think of the right words. Brittany thought that Santana was happiest then.

Santana's parents hadn't taken it well, unlike Brittany's. Santana hadn't needed to explain any of that; Brittany knew without a single word being spoken. 

"My parents saw what was on TV," Brittany said when Santana had been quiet in her arms for a long, pained time. "They didn't care. They said they knew that we were supposed to be together, and it was okay."

Santana flinched.

"If... if you want, you can come over to my house when it's hard at yours." Brittany stroked her hair. She liked taking care of Santana. She didn't get to, not often, and she took the chance when it was offered. "Okay?"

Dark eyes, glossy with tears, turned to her. Santana didn't answer out loud, but that time she didn't need to use her words. Brittany knew her look meant "okay" as surely as if she really did have Finn's powers. "Okay," Brittany repeated, like Santana had given the answer herself, and squeezed her tightly. "It'll all work out."

"How?" Santana asked.

Brittany shrugged. "It just will."

Santana seemed to accept that.

* * *

"Well," Lauren drawled as she and Puck took a seat against a far wall, "this has been fun."

He chuckled sheepishly and rubbed his mohawk like a lucky rabbit's foot. "How much did it suck for you when your folks saw the news?"

She shrugged. "They didn't care about the superhero stuff, just about sneaking out. I told 'em it was a new thing and they believed me. Sylvester ruined my day, though."

Puck grimaced. "How bad was it?"

Lauren snorted and glared at the woman. "She didn't believe that we hadn't known about this until it felt like we'd gone through a friggin' colonoscopy. At least Mr. Schue called her on it when she said she wanted to haul everyone to Gitmo."

"Yeah, she's like that," Puck said. "Sorry you had to deal with her." His words were half-hearted, as he was still hurt by the insinuations from Finn. He thought a lot of girls were hot and he hadn't cheated on Lauren, so why would being intrigued by how damn _bendy_ Kurt was suddenly break his fidelity streak? 

"So," Lauren asked after a long stretch of watching him, "why didn't you tell me? Why'd I have to stumble across your costume?"

He got the feeling that there was a right and wrong answer he could give, but he had no idea which was which. Did she think that girlfriends deserved to know everything? Did she have a secret hero fetish like she had a vampire fetish, and was annoyed that they'd lost out on precious makeout time? As he had no idea which tactic to take, Puck decided to go with the simple truth and hope for the best. "Everyone kept talking about how people dating superheroes could wind up in danger, and we didn't want to let that happen." He shrugged. "Sorry."

Lauren's face was unreadable. He didn't know whether that had been the right answer or not. "Yeah," she finally said, "I thought that was probably it. And that's crap."

Wrong answer.

"I'm not weak and I'm not a kid, okay?" She waited for him to nod. "Okay. You don't get to make decisions for me. You don't get to treat me like I'm going to break. The Zizes does not break. I didn't break when that crap went down at the wrestling state championship, I didn't break when I had to change my own tire in a blizzard... get it?" At his second nod, she continued. "I'm strong and I love being strong. Don't treat me like I'm some china doll. I'd rather be cheated on than have someone treat me like I'm weak, seriously, that's how much I hate it."

What was _with_ people assuming he was going to cheat? "Okay, sorry," Puck said. "You're right. You kick ass and I shouldn't have thought you couldn't deal with whatever happened here. And. Uh." Oh, crap.

She saw the slow-building horror behind his eyes and asked, "What?"

"Yeah. So if I'm being clean with everything, and I'm not going to treat you like you could break...." Puck swallowed. "You know how I haven't been down with, uh, getting down?"

"Yeah?" Lauren asked warily.

"It's because I'm strong. I was worried that I'd hurt you on accident." He saw her start to say something, offended again, and added, "Look, Kurt and Rachel made me check myself and I dented the wall."

Lauren frowned. "What, did your hand slip? Use less lotion."

Man, if only. "No. I mean. When I." Boy, was it ever awkward to try to explain splooge going off like a bullet. "When I, uh, reached the promised land. _All_ my muscles are strong."

"Oh," Lauren said, but didn't seem to truly understand for a few seconds. Her eyes opened abruptly wide and she swallowed. "Got it." She took a few deep breaths while Puck thought about the horrors of celibacy, then said, "So until you figure out how... not to do that, we've got mouths and hands. Right?"

Puck blinked. That was true, and considering that Lauren didn't treat him like _he_ would break, a handjob actually felt pretty fantastic. "Uh, right. Wow, I didn't think you'd be so cool with this."

Proud of herself, Lauren smirked and slung her arm around his shoulders. "See? This is what happens when you don't try to make decisions for me. You get blowjobs."

"That could still be kind of dangerous—"

"Not a problem. You make a face when you've got five seconds to go." He pulled back to eye her and she nodded. "You do. This weird twisted-up 'oh god' face," she said and imitated it. Puck felt a wave of embarrassment over how he apparently looked like anything but a sex god with a few seconds left on the timer, but she laughed and leaned back into him. "So how'd things go with your family?"

"You know," Puck said, "I think things are gonna be okay."

* * *

It just wasn't fair. That was all there was to it: her life was not fair. Rachel was supposed to be respected and beloved and capable, and the previous twelve hours had stripped her of all of those things. If her life had been turned upside down like this, then she felt she was owed an interview on the news. If she had to deal with a secret past _and_ media silence _and_ a shredded family, then she at least deserved to maintain control of her own team. But no, she didn't get anything.

Everything had gone so wrong. Usually, when things fell apart, she had some idea of what to try. She never simply sat back and let things happen. She strove, she fought, she did whatever seemed best at the time. It didn't always work out, but not being able to try anything was the worst outcome of all.

"Do you remember anything else yet?" Finn asked. She shook her head. "Don't worry. It'll come. I think... heh, yeah, you and Kurt were friends in New York. Really good ones. That's cool, huh?"

"And they ruined that for us?" she asked flatly. "We couldn't keep that friendship when we got here? We had to earn it all over again?" Whoever had made all these decisions about their lives was simply sadistic.

What were people saying about Anthem right now? Did little girls already want to be her, or would she take up one afternoon's imagination in the city park and then be forgotten? She didn't know. Her phone and computer were gone, and from the sound of it S.H.I.E.L.D. had shut down the media. That had to be wildly unconstitutional, but it didn't matter. They could get away with delaying the story and after a few days the interest would be gone. There would be no striking while the iron was hot. She was dully and totally certain that, with those government threats, not a single reporter at any local news station would accept her call even if she could make one. They'd probably hang up, convinced they were headed for jail.

Rachel frowned. Wait.

With fortunate speed, she remembered who she was sitting next to and tried to fight back her thoughts before Finn read anything incriminating. Waterfalls. Rushing streams. Fountains. "Finn," she said when she felt all the right things, "it looks like Ms. Sylvester and Mr. Schue left to go get our parents, and I really have to use the bathroom. Cover for me if she comes back, all right? I'll just be a minute."

He nodded. "Got it. Hurry up, though, I bet Sue'd be pretty upset if she saw you were gone."

Yes, Rachel certainly planned to take action before anyone saw her. She kissed Finn, thanked him, and then walked out of the gym with the awkward stance of someone whose bladder felt ready to explode. It was, if she were to give herself proper credit, entirely convincing. The second the doors closed behind her, she made sure the hallways were clear and ran.

She _never_ just sat on her hands and let the world happen to her, Rachel thought with a grin as her feet pounded the way to the library, in the opposite direction from the choir room. The computers wouldn't have this email address stored, but she knew it by heart. She'd gotten countless messages from that one familiar name.

Normally, she ignored every single one. Today, though, she was going to make Jacob Ben Israel's dreams come true.

_Hello Jacob,_

_It's Rachel. Everything you saw on the news was real and we're all superheroes, but I'm under a media lockout. The government is involved. I need your help. I need you to tell everyone in the entire world how fabulous I am and what a perfect hero I would make. Talk to people who know me, get quotes, everything. Set up fan pages on Facebook. Whatever you think would be the best way to go about this. I trust your judgment. <3_

_I know it's an awful lot to ask, but I would be SO appreciative. You'd be MY hero. :) :) :)_

_Thank you thank you! I will make this up to you as soon as all this craziness dies down._

Rachel hesitated before finishing her email. Oh, what the hell. It wasn't like she was going to follow through on any of these implied promises.

_Love, Rachel  
XOXOXO_

Feeling only a little bit dirty, she sent her email, logged out, and darted to the restroom just in case Finn had some knee-jerk reaction of checking whether her body really felt attended to. As she washed her hands, Rachel smiled at her face in the mirror and saw the strength that everyone had tried to steal from her. 

Sue Sylvester was many things, but incompetent was not one of them. Multiple other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had revealed themselves, too. All of those skilled agents working together would certainly be able to take care of this little concern over New Directions (the Awesomes) being targeted. That danger would be addressed and permanently resolved. Then, Rachel would be able to step in front of the cameras and answer questions coming from a media with pent-up demand. Perfect. Absolutely perfect.

Never give up, her brain chirped as she hurried back to the gym, and _never_ surrender. Finn loved that movie. He'd made her watch it a half-dozen times, probably. She kept the image of Alan Rickman in a terrible alien costume firmly in mind as she returned to Finn's side.

"We should watch Galaxy Quest again," he said with a smile. "I mean, assuming they let us out of our houses for the next year."

"We absolutely will," Rachel said. As Finn talked about what their old home and friendships had been like, she managed to forget about Jacob Ben Israel just like she did on every other day of her life.

* * *

The rejects. The dregs. The leftovers, the extra pieces that didn't quite fit. Quinn listened to the words floating up from conversations around her and tried not to let her tight, strained smile waver for even a second.

"I can remember New York," Artie said in amazement. "It was like they just had to mention it and... yeah, now I can remember. Well, pieces of it, anyway. I can see my old room, and our neighbor...." Trailing off, Artie squinted at nothing. "He had a lot of birds. Seriously. Birds. That guy went through newspaper like crazy."

Finn and Rachel were talking about recovering old relationships. Even if Quinn could barely remember New York, what was happening in Ohio was clear: everything old was new again. Apparently Finn and Kurt were _actually_ related, which she would laugh hysterically over at some point in the future, and she had the distinct feeling that many of the couples in the gym had recreated themselves after a short break. Friendships were returning. The disturbed equilibrium was correcting itself. "Do you know what this makes us?" Quinn asked bitterly.

Artie considered that. "New Yorkers by way of Ohioans? New... Yorkians?"

"The two of us, Artie? We're distractions." She'd thought it wouldn't hurt. Then why did her voice sound so funny? 

"I don't get it," he said uncertainly.

"When our fake lives started up here in Ohio," Quinn began, gesturing toward two couples on the bleachers, "we were dating people. I had Finn and you had Tina. Now they're back with who they're _supposed_ to have and we're all alone, talking to each other."

Artie looked at the paired-off room. His expression dropped with each romantic couple, but he made a valiant effort to collect himself when his attention returned to Quinn. "Yeah, but... but we've dated other people since then. Why couldn't Tina be my distraction? Why wasn't Finn your distraction?"

It was a poor argument. He clearly knew it. "Look at them," Quinn said as she watched Rachel and Finn merge into a single silhouette against the pale gym floor. They were an inseparable mass of comfort, all arms and smiles. "Look at them," she repeated, nodding to where Mike and Tina looked ready to take on the world together. "And then look at us."

He took in what that meant. All Artie had to offer in response was a stricken, painfully lonely expression.

"We were spare parts before we moved here, I'm guessing," Quinn said. "And we got used to break up the happy couples until they moved on to someone better. They get the happy endings. I get to hear that my fake dad couldn't wait to get rid of me." Her laugh landed like a broken bird. "Like I said, everything's making so much more sense right now."

Artie looked at Mike and Tina for a very long time, still and silent. They didn't notice. 

Quinn had begun to retreat into herself when she felt a warm, gloved hand close around hers. She looked at Artie and managed to smile. The leather of his glove was slick and clean, and the fingers inside it were very strong. "Thanks," she said, threading her fingers through his.

"I heard what you were doing with those bad guys," Artie said. "You took out one guy all by yourself. You're pretty awesome."

Her tiny, frail smile grew. "You set up that whole system to direct people, and you woke up our powers in the first place. You're sort of awesome yourself." She hesitated. "We have to stop using that word, I hate Finn's stupid name."

Artie laughed. "You're kind of kickass."

Quinn leaned over and nudged his shoulder with hers. "I'll take that."

* * *

"Okay, kids," Sue announced upon her return, and everyone turned to face her as parents trailed into the gym. Finn swept the group's minds like a habit. After their time spent in close comfort, people seemed to be in better sorts than when they'd first found out about their families. Even Santana seemed marginally less... awful. "You're being sent home now that I've talked to everyone. Hopefully I've impressed upon you how very, very stupid you would be to not listen to your friendly neighborhood S.H.I.E.L.D. agent with more decorations than the Rockefeller tree. Know that I will be coming by. I will be giving more orders. And I will expect all of you to follow your parents' directions as if they came directly from me, your lord and master. Keys."

Kurt bolted from the bleachers, put a keychain in her hand, and hurried back.

Sue shoved the keychain into her pocket. "Go home. I suppose you can be allowed to mingle between yourselves, but don't go out in public. That's—"

"Can Santana stay at my house?" Brittany asked. Her parents' surprise was clear, and not just to Finn. They turned to another couple and made questioning noises.

"That's fine," said who had to be Mrs. Lopez. "Santana can pack a bag if she likes, to stay over there longer." Her words earned a strange combination of relief and heartbreak from Santana, but relief was the greater by far. She nodded. When she mouthed 'thank you' to the Pierces, they smiled back.

Seeing his parents walking toward him, Finn whispered to Rachel, "Talk to you soon, okay? It sounds like they'll let you come over." She kissed him and departed for her fathers as Finn stood to great Burt and Carole.

"Hey," Burt said, nodding to both boys as they came together. "How'd it go with, you know, everyone? She said all the kids heard about their folks."

"Some people are pretty upset," Kurt said. "But no one fired up their powers and ran away, so I suppose they have one up on me." He smiled when Burt good-naturedly chucked his chin. "I think things will work out. It might take longer for some people, but no one seems, you know... broken."

"Yeah," Finn agreed after a slow look around the room. "I think everyone's got at least a little hope, and that's what you need, right?"

"Right," Carole agreed. "Oh, boys, I'm so proud of you for handling all of this. I can't even believe how much you've been through, and here you are all... logical and mature." She smiled sadly. "You're growing up so fast."

"We knew we wouldn't have them in the house for long," Burt pointed out and she nodded mournfully. "Come on. We'll stop on the way home, get whatever you want."

"Is that safe?" Kurt asked.

Burt and Carole looked at each other, startled. Finn felt a jolt of surprise as well when he realized just how pervasive this change was in every aspect of their lives. They clearly hadn't considered that allowing someone else to prepare their food could be a risk. "Yes," Carole decided. "Yes, the people in this town aren't hostile."

"You'd be surprised," Kurt said meaningfully.

She smiled. "Sorry. I mean they're not actively trying to... well... we would have been told if we needed to exercise that level of caution. But you were very on top of things to think of it as a possible vector of attack. I'm out of practice. Although I do still use the lingo, apparently." With a tired glance toward Burt, she laughed and said, "Let's just go home."

They spent the evening as a family. It was as if every single move was deliberately chosen on Burt and Carole's part to make them feel that way, and yet it didn't seem forced. They didn't just get fast food, they called ahead to a restaurant and picked up their favorite full meals. They ate around the table, talking about plans for their senior year instead of what they'd done as superheroes. Two movies topped things off, with so many snacks and drinks that Finn only stopped when his stomach felt slightly distended.

"It'll be okay, boys," Carole said again when they all headed upstairs. "As much as I hate to admit this, I know Sue's reputation. She's fantastic."

"That is what she always tells us," Kurt replied wryly. Everyone chuckled. "Thanks for...." 

"For being you," Finn finished and Kurt nodded. Burt and Carole smiled back, and it didn't feel like their temporary home or their new home, but simply _home_ within those walls. When Kurt walked into his room, Finn found himself following. "Hey, uh. You wanna talk at all? Watch more TV, whatever?"

Kurt looked up from wiping a few dust smudges off his costume. He blushed as he worked. Finn deliberately stayed out of his mind; he didn't want to know why. "Oh, um. All right." After flinging himself onto his bed and gesturing to a chair, he said, "So, what do you remember?"

"The way our apartment smelled," Finn said after a thoughtful pause. "Kind of flowery?"

Considering that, Kurt got up and started rifling through his vanity. He occasionally popped open a tube, squeezed, and sniffed. "There," he said in wonder and returned to Finn. "Lavender, right?"

A small puff of air under Finn's nose had him ten years old again. He was in a Giants jersey that was several sizes too big. (Disembodied voices told him that he'd grow into it.) With excitement, he told his unseen mother that.... Finn shook his head, laughing as he snapped out of something that was less a memory than a full-on flashback. "That's it. Man, smells do something to you."

"They're very evocative," Kurt agreed and sent a few more puffs of air at himself. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. "I just want to remember everything. Our first attempt at being heroes, what school was like, my favorite places to go... everything. And now I'm getting high off hand lotion, time to put it away."

Grinning, Finn waited until he was comfortably back on the bed. "Do you remember anything about... uh, what should I call them. Do you remember First Mom and Dad yet?"

"No." Kurt frowned. "Is that strange? That we can remember other things?"

"Maybe," Finn shrugged. "But it's the same for me. I remember that you were totally buds with Rachel, though. Same with me for, um, Puck." 

Kurt didn't seem to pick up on his hesitation with Puck's name. "That's a little unfair, isn't it? You got to keep your friendship, even if things did blow up after we got here. You were dating someone. You had... you had anyone," he finished quietly. "Some people started off here a lot better than others."

"Sorry," Finn said. He was pretty sure it wasn't really his fault, but that sort of thing just demanded a sorry. 

They moved quietly and naturally into watching sitcom reruns. Finn didn't plan on sleeping there again. It had felt natural and as nostalgic as Christmas morning, but they were both seventeen years old with their own rooms. Time to grow up. Still, it felt good to at least _approach_ sleep in the same room and Finn felt no real drive to head to his own bed. That day had shown him how important it was not to feel alone.

In the middle of a Simpsons rerun, Finn heard snoring. Kurt must have fallen asleep while Finn was too enthralled with the discussion of monorails to notice. As Kurt slipped into his dreams, Finn bit back a pained groan. Like some reflex, the pain of recent events was trying to hide behind something much, much more pleasant. Quietly, Finn stood and crept to the door. Having a wall between them wouldn't block Kurt's dreams, he knew from unfortunate experience, but it would at least block the sight and sound of his brother getting off to some dream dude. 

(Even though Rachel had once lectured him about using the word, Finn kept thinking that Dream Kurt was kind of a slut.)

Yep, Finn thought as he sped his pace. He so did not need to see and feel being pinned to the wall by Blaine or Captain Kirk. He so did not need... oh god, the guy had a cocky smile and needed to be rescued from some mistake, it was Kirk again. Run, run, he told himself. The lens flares were coming and they would soon be his only protection against a full-frontal view.

Wait.

No, _run_ , part of his brain told him, but another demanded that he stop, turn around, and stare at Kurt in open-mouthed horror. That wasn't Captain Kirk. Kurt was dreaming about a charming showoff playboy, but he _wasn't James T. Kirk._

That wasn't what Captain Kirk's hair looked like.

It would have been so easy to excuse this as a dream. Finn had dreamed about every single girl in New Directions, along with Terri, Emma, Rachel's mom, and, on one really unfortunate occasion that had him avoiding everyone's eyes all day, Sue. Finn would have loved to excuse this as a dream, if not for how his memories resonated like a bell being struck.

Him and Rachel.

Mike and Tina.

Santana and Brittany.

Kurt... and Puck.

"Oh god," Finn whispered as the feeling of fingertips sliding across a stubble-marked scalp filled his mind. He recognized them not as dreams, but as memories. "Oh god." Frozen, he could only stare in horror as Kurt's mouth parted just enough for some imaginary partner to kiss. He shifted on the bed. When he began to roll flat, Finn bolted through the door before he could see whether his pants would tent.

Brittany's chaos powers had hit him, Finn decided as he fled to the living room and began pacing back and forth. His brain was filled with impossible things. That was why he thought Kurt remembered being with Puck, or why his memories told him that they were as natural together as him and Rachel. Brittany had turned a pillow into a fish, after all; she could warp a few lousy memories.

But Puck had shoved Finn out of the way when Kurt was hurt and on the edge of consciousness. He'd admired Kurt's legs like it was normal. They'd been sitting together, laughing, joking. He'd run in quickly enough to stop a car, and Finn had a sinking feeling that he knew who in their group had really mattered. And now he was feeling physical attraction toward Kurt and not even trying to deny it, just as their memories had been slowly breaking free of their bonds.

It was real. Oh god, it was _real._ He began to remember moments of a younger Puck showing up in a New York apartment that smelled of lavender, of Puck and Kurt running off together down the sidewalk, of.... Finn screwed his eyes closed, took a deep breath, and tried to think rationally about what was going on.

Fact: Kurt was very happy with a boy who didn't cheat as easily as he breathed or slept.

Fact: Kurt and Puck were _both_ involved in relationships, and so had no reason to consider each other at all, just like Puck himself had said.

Fact: He'd stayed clear of Blaine's brain but he knew firsthand what sort of sick, twisted attraction lingered in Puck's, and he was _so_ not cool with knowing how someone felt toward his brother.

And, fact: knowing this would only make things worse. There were absolutely no positives.

Certainty brought a calmness with it. Finn inhaled, exhaled, and nodded before he turned around to climb the stairs. It was his job to look out for Kurt. He'd screwed it up in Lima. He had to do better.

The next morning he made sure to catch Kurt in the kitchen. "Hey," Finn said and reached for the carton of orange juice. "I was really trying to remember things, and now I think I know why I was dating someone here and you weren't."

Grimacing faintly, Kurt said, "Do tell. This should be a delight."

"It's just that you'd never dated anyone in New York, and so they wanted to have things feel the same way here," Finn said. He'd been practicing that line for the past twenty minutes. It barely sounded like a lie.

"Really?" Kurt asked after a second of hesitation. "Are you sure? That's a little depressing that even in a big gay paradise, I was left on the shelf." He did sound hurt, which Finn hadn't intended. Crap. Crap crap crap.

"Well, you know." Finn laughed nervously. "You're into, like, grown-up romance and chick stuff. Which is fine! And this would have been junior high years, right? Everyone's dumb during junior high. Maybe you just wanted to wait for the right guy." He brightened. His smile was painfully large. "And hey, you did! Yay!" Oh god, did he just actually use the word _yay?_

Kurt eyed him, grabbed his toast as it ejected, and spread margarine with a thoughtful look. "Huh. I suppose so. I just... I'd been having these little flashes that felt like something."

Finn stared at Kurt like he was reading his mind, and then shook his head. "Nope. Just dreams. No real memories." At the questioning look he nodded and gestured to his temple. "And I'd know the truth, right? Come on. Isn't it better to get a real first boyfriend instead of some random guy in New York that you'll never see again?"

Kurt swallowed a bite of toast, took a drink, then admitted, "That's an excellent point. Thanks."

"Any time," Finn said and started two more pieces of bread toasting. The previous day in the gym, with everyone's shock and heartbreak, had shown him just how bad things could get. No, strike that: the pain just before Kurt had run out of the house was worse than anything, when he'd flashed through a hundred memories of Burt in an instant and then tried to discard them all. Just as surely as they'd seen pain, Finn had also seen comfort when people paired off. They _needed_ each other. If they were going to make it through everything, they had to depend on each other. "Just trying to look out for you."


	17. Ohana

"This is the guest bedroom," said Annie Pierce as she led Santana down the hallway of their home. Santana already knew where the guest bedroom was, of course, but also knew it was less for the sake of information than to say she and Brittany needed to keep any interactions rated PG-13 under their roof. Fine.

"Thanks," she said as she held her bag awkwardly in front of her. Her parents had stayed out of her way when she'd gathered up clothes and toiletries. It could have felt like the worst-case scenario she'd imagined, having to flee with barely anything to her name, but they never acted like her ejection was permanent. They'd never even mentioned Brittany. Santana had no idea what was going on and she wasn't going to press her luck.

When Santana walked into the room, Brittany followed her. "We're not allowed to do it tonight. Or however long you're here."

"Yeah, I kinda figured," Santana said, rifling through her clothes. She'd forgotten her costume. Not that it would matter, given their discovery, but she'd become used to making sure she always had access to it. 

"I need to go help with dinner, but we'll talk later, okay?" Brittany asked with a smile, and Santana managed a weak one of her own as she nodded back. "Okay," Brittany repeated and kissed her on the cheek before she left. Touching the spot with her fingertips, Santana smiled for real. Examining the available drawers in the room sparked a short mental debate about how thoroughly she wanted to settle in, and what the options would say about her relationship with her parents.

"I'm glad they let you stay here," said Annie a few minutes later, when Santana was elbow-deep in her bag. She looked so much like an older Brittany that it was difficult to believe that they weren't really related. "I know things are a little tense at your house, and you kids have already gone through a lot."

Santana hesitated. She hadn't really _talked_ to Brittany's mom before; she was always like some prison guard that had to be watched out for lest she ruin their fun. But she was sweet and kind and she smelled like cookies, and she was a mom who didn't act like Santana was making her life harder simply by existing. Santana left her bag alone and perched on the edge of the bed. "Well, thanks for letting me stay."

Annie bit her lip before she closed the door behind her, sat down, and looked at Santana very seriously. "It's probably not my place to tell you this, but I honestly don't know if your folks will. And you deserve to know the truth about everything. That's why I asked Brittany to help her dad with dinner, so she'd be busy."

"Okay," Santana said warily.

"Your parents don't care that you like girls. They told us that." Shock so completely filled Santana that she almost forgot to breathe. Annie nodded and continued. "They never did. They got pressured by the government into participating in this program, and they resent it. They're just unhappy that you were a superhero on TV. They think they'll get in trouble."

"They don't care," Santana repeated blankly. She'd hurled her guts out and they didn't even care? If everything was okay, then why did Annie look so depressed? That level of Sad Mom Face was totally inappropriate for anything short of saying a puppy ran out into the street and got hit by a truck full of Harry Potter books. "Then why...?"

"They _really_ don't want to be here in Lima," Annie said gently. "They... they just wanted to get through."

Get through what? As soon as Santana asked, the answer came: they just had to get through her. Sometimes they'd been short-tempered or distant, but sometimes they'd been sweet and interested in her life. That was all an act. She was supposed to get through high school and get out of their lives, kept compliant with new clothes, a new car, or new boobs. When they managed to play their parts, they were actually pretty good parents. But there was no base to it. Nothing to anchor them when they'd had a bad day at work and wanted to snap at someone. "Why are you telling me this?" she asked.

Annie sure looked sweet for a woman who'd just told a girl that her parents were counting down the days until they were free of her. "Because you need to know that you never did anything wrong, and nothing is wrong about you. Okay? Ben and I like you. You're strong and determined, and... when Brittany dated Artie last year, we were actually worried. We kept pointing out all his faults, and... it was actually really terrible of us to do, and it turns out that it wasn't necessary. But we wanted you back around Brittany."

Okay, so now Brittany's parents were creepy stalkers with an unhealthy interest in their daughter's love life, and they'd just invited Santana into their house and closed her into a room. _Fantastic._ "Uh huh," Santana said, leaning away from Annie. She wondered how much worse her day could get and how much like a supervillain someone had to act like before she was allowed to punch them with a blast furnace fist.

"Brittany might be in danger," Annie said and Santana's worry abruptly recentered itself, "and they told us that you help her."

After the week she'd had, Santana thought she was justified in demanding, "What?"

"The power blockers were never perfect. Not for everyone. I can't imagine that you were randomly lighting things on fire, but maybe you saw some unexplained behavior from some of the others?" Annie shrugged. Santana didn't bother seriously thinking about the question and just gestured her on. "We knew that Brittany's powers occasionally leaked through when I walked in one day and her cat was reading her diary."

"That actually happened," Santana said in disbelief.

Annie nodded. "It was infrequent, but sometimes unexplained things happened around Brittany. We were told that her powers were strong enough and tricky enough that the blocking might not be a hundred percent. Your fire was pretty straightforward to block, it sounds like, but chaos powers...." Shrugging, she looked resigned to the idea that she'd signed on to mother a girl who could make anything happen, quite literally.

Santana thought about the others. "So, say, a kid in a total backwater shows up looking like he's wearing thousand dollar outfits. Or a moron has half-minute flashes of clueing in to how people feel. Or a Spielberg wannabe can make big technical productions out of nowhere."

"Their powers probably leaked through," Annie agreed. Well... huh. It made sense, but what did that have to do with Brittany? Why was she in danger? Seeing the question lurking, Annie kept on. "Chaos powers can be driven by emotions, and a lack of focus can be dangerous. You center her, you make her happy. Eventually she'll learn how to control them completely, but until then...." She risked resting her hand on Santana's. "With her powers totally free again, we're concerned. Not worried, just concerned. And you're not responsible for her getting her powers pinned down, of course, but we just thought we'd make it easy for you both if you wanted to spend time around each other."

"Okay," Santana said uncertainly. Somehow this felt more overwhelming than all the bad stuff she'd heard over the past day.

"Well, in any case, we'll call you down for dinner in a bit. Feel free to bring snacks in here later, and there's a TV in the armoire." She opened the door and revealed an old set with a built-in VCR. Even though the house had to be new, because _they_ were new, it felt so much more comfortable than the slick decorating decisions Santana's parents had made for theirs. 

"Thanks," Santana said. She'd reached the point where she couldn't really hurt any more and so she could only go up. Okay, her parents didn't want her. Okay, they weren't really her parents. Good thing she didn't have to stay with them, right?

Until dinner was served, she was left in blessed silence. Brittany smiled but let her eat, and except for a few attempts at conversation from Ben and Annie it was quiet. The silence was comfortable, not awkward. Santana ate until she was full, secure that she wouldn't hear any comments about watching her weight, and Brittany followed her back to the guest room when she was done. "Do you want to watch a movie?" she asked, nodding to the little TV.

Santana glanced at the bed, as it was the only comfortable angle to watch from. "Will your parents care?"

She shrugged. "I'll leave the door open so they can see and it'll be fine. One sec, we have some old tapes in the den." She disappeared and returned after Santana had climbed under a blanket. Popping in the movie without announcing its name, she laid next to Santana but didn't climb under the cover. "Looks better if they walk by," she explained. Santana didn't argue. She wasn't about to piss off another family.

Preview clips for long-outdated movies started playing. Brittany ignored them and asked, "What do you want to do?" Santana looked at Brittany uncertainly and she clarified, "You mostly wanted to be captain because Rachel wanted to be captain. And before you kissed me, you looked at how she was kissing Finn." Her fingers tugged at each other. "So... are you just going to wait to see what she does next?"

"It was never about _Rachel_ ," Santana said and flung a throw pillow like she could impact an obnoxious little Jewish-American Princess' head with it. "I told you. It was about how things just work for her. Did she have to freak out over kissing Godzilla in front of the TV cameras? No. Do her dads actually love her? Yeah. It's about how I just want to be able to walk down the street with you like she does with Finn and not feel so scared about who's watching. It's about wanting a dad who'll kick ass for me like Kurt apparently got. It's about having people pick me, you know?"

"Well, I picked you," Brittany point out.

"No, you picked Artie."

"Because you didn't act like it was real and important," Brittany fired back, "and that made me upset. I want real. I want to be picked, too."

"Brittany, just...." Frustrated, Santana bit down on the sharp words that came to mind. Maybe she'd use them on other people, but not her. "Your parents really love you. I don't know how, but you float through life hardly taking any shit over making out with guys _and_ girls. It's easier for you, okay? Just give me a little time to catch up."

Brittany had washed her face after dinner. Her eyelashes were very pale without mascara. When she looked down at her hands, it was like snow falling in front of her blue eyes. "How long do you think you'll need?"

"Until I know what it feels like not to be scared," Santana said as the promos ended and the familiar blue Disney castle appeared. If Brittany didn't know what to say to that, at least she didn't argue.

"We should go there some time," Brittany said as the first song began. Hawaiian music sounded tinny on the single speaker, but the tropical colors were beautiful. "And lie on the beach and have piña coladas and roast a pig."

Santana grinned and felt some of her emotional weight roll off her as Lilo & Stitch played. Even if things were still awful, it felt good to head upward a little bit. "I think people roast the pigs for you."

"Then we'll just eat the pig," Brittany said definitively.

"Sounds like a plan," Santana said. She didn't know where she really stood with her family or what her future would be, or even how she would make things work with Brittany. At least, though, she knew that the last one _would_ happen. It was just a matter of time. It had to be. With each new scene her head came to rest a little more completely upon Brittany's shoulder. Warm against her and under the blanket, Santana began to fall asleep.

That was how it should be, she thought distantly as the world fell away from her. How it should be, how it'd been.

Ohana, she heard through a long tunnel as dreams overtook her. Nobody gets left behind, or forgotten.

* * *

The sun was bright that February day. Unseasonable warmth had rolled up the Atlantic, and although the forecast went back to normal by next week, January's snow and slush had melted into nothing more than puddles. The ground that never saw shadows had dried completely. One of those dry patches was where Brittany and Santana had spread out their blanket on a gentle slope of Prospect Park.

"Okay," Santana said as she wrapped her arms around herself. "Warm for February doesn't mean it's actually warm."

"We should go to the zoo," Brittany said, smiling off at the distance. "You wanna go to the zoo?"

"Depends. Can we set a giraffe on fire?"

"Uh." Brittany paused. "Probably not."

Santana shoved her hands into her armpits and glowered at everything in front of her. "Then nope." She wanted to sit there in the weak but direct sun and wait for August, or to go inside and sit next to a radiator. Sudden warmth against one side was so welcome that it took her a second to realize what had happened: Brittany was cuddling. "Um," she managed.

This was the closest she'd ever been to another girl, and Santana did feel suddenly and totally warm. Brittany's hair sprawled like sunbeams across her shoulder. It smelled like papaya. She didn't know what was happening, but for the first time it felt like something that she couldn't explain away. 

Santana had always liked looking at girls when they changed in the locker room. All of her friends did that to dissect each other's hair, bodies, or clothes. At first it was commenting on training bras, then normal bras, then padded push-up bras for a few brave souls. Even if Santana began lingering more than the other girls... it was normal.

She didn't understand why those other girls started to move away from her, or why they whispered and laughed. When they talked about other normal girl things—favorite musicians, hairstyles, online stores—Santana nodded from the outside of their little clusters and smiled so hard that it hurt. She was pretty, talented, and smart. They _should_ like her. 

When it turned to boys, she lied. She hadn't dated anyone. Santana loved her mom, but she was nosy, even more than her dad. Her mother kept talking about how she expected that anyone Santana brought over would have to meet her standards, and she _did_ expect that Santana would bring them over. Meanwhile Santana had just turned fourteen, and it was easier to think about her New York State history project than to figure out which boy she was supposed to like.

Near the end of that summer, her parents told her she was going to a new school because of their new assignment. A car would pick her up each morning if she didn't want to take the subway. At first having a driver was great, but he was always cold and off-putting. Santana started talking the subway. The teachers at her new school were more like private tutors, as each one had a PhD in their field and was only assigned to eleven students. If she'd thought she was smart before, a semester with them felt like genius mode.

That was where she met Brittany. They were both in Brooklyn, but if not for their parents' work pushing them into that same school, they never would have met. Brittany didn't mind when Santana looked at her during class. She smiled back and wanted to talk to her even more. 

All of that ran through her mind before Santana was abruptly back in Prospect Park. Brittany's wide blue eyes held her gaze and Santana realized how still she'd gone. "Hey," Brittany said, and smiled.

"Hey," Santana said, and swallowed.

"I saw some girls do this outside my window last week. I think we should try it."

Huh? "Try what?" Santana began to ask, but only got the first word out. Brittany's lips landed very gently on hers.￼ 

She still smelled like papaya, but tasted like cinnamon gum and Coca-Cola Classic. She tasted perfect. She was soft and beautiful and fit just right against Santana like she hadn't known anyone could.

When she pulled back, Brittany looked like she'd been given a gift. "Yeah. I want to do that again."

Santana took a deep breath. The air felt cold going down her throat. "What'd you do?" she asked. Her heart battered her ribcage as she looked around. A middle-aged couple was pointing not at the two girls, but past them at something on the Brooklyn skyline. They'd seen. They didn't care.

"I kissed you," Brittany said. Yes, that was indeed it. It was so perfect in its simplicity, but Santana's wide-eyed stare introduced doubt into her voice. "Was it okay?"

"It was perfect," Santana said and leaned in again.

Her mother liked Brittany when Santana finally brought her over. She would have disapproved of any boy, it turned out, because she'd always known and had never cared. Her father told them to mind their schoolwork and gave her a curfew that Santana thought was far too strict. 

In a guest bedroom in Lima, Ohio, Santana woke up crying with the memories of her lost life. It was dark and she was alone. She remembered almost everything, after her memories had been stirred by relaxing so completely into her moment with Brittany: her Brooklyn room, her private snack drawer, an iPod that looked hopelessly thick and clunky to her now. What it had been like to meet everyone else on that first day of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s special school. What her parents looked like when they smiled. When they hugged her. When they told her that they loved her very, very much. She could never get them back.

But the next time she and Brittany were out in public, she could kiss her without a mask. That was what it felt like not to be afraid, and she'd be damned if she'd give it up again.

* * *

It was quiet for the group as they dealt with their isolation chambers of no computers, no phones, and no going outside. People spent their time connecting with family, or flipping through picturebooks of New York City and waiting for something to feel familiar deep in their hearts. Now that they'd been told the truth, they began to remember.

Mercedes remembered being woken up by the morning sun. Her room in Lima faced west. 

Artie remembered sitting in a Manhattan classroom, what his old parents sounded like, and that he'd had a cat who died when he was seven.

Santana remembered nearly everything, but didn't tell anyone. It all felt so perfect that she didn't want to try to explain her memories. They might burst like soap bubbles and leave only Lima around her.

Rachel, consumed with wondering what other people were saying about them, hardly remembered anything.

* * *

"Rachel," one of her dads asked two days after the group meeting in the gym, "everyone's seeing if any of their kids had anything to do with this."

Rachel sat up from drawing costume ideas. (Eventually she would be off on her own, rather than part of a group with matching costumes. It was important to establish her own identity, but her concepts were all terrible. She needed to talk to Kurt again.) "What is it?" Rachel's laptop was put down, then opened. A Facebook fan page for the Awesomes filled its monitor. "Oh... oh, look at that!" she said, just biting back on her instinctive reaction of being thrilled that Jacob had done what she'd asked.

"Rachel," Hiram said seriously.

"Yes?" she asked, smiling up at him with all the innocence of a newborn babe.

He didn't look won over. "Rachel, Jacob bothers you all the time at temple. I know you know him. So I'll ask you again: did you have anything to do with this?"

"No, Dad," she said, shaking her head. "I promise. I mean, I'm sure he _was_ trying to impress me, but he does that all the time on his own. And he does have sources." Her fingers inched toward the touchpad and she risked asking, "Can I look?"

"Fine," Hiram sighed. "Just don't post. I'll go call Sue, tell her that the 'fear of god' approach looks like the way to go with this kid." He walked off, grumbling, and Rachel seized the chance to investigate how thoroughly Jacob had promoted her to the public at large.

In short: very. The gallery already had hundreds of photos, between screencaptures of the news, witnesses' phone snapshots he'd tracked down, and civilian pictures from around Lima. He _must_ be trying to impress her, Rachel thought giddily as she looked at them. He hadn't included a single shot of her friends being humiliated. Thousands of people had liked the page already, and it was clearly serving its purpose as a one-stop shop for potential fans of their new team. Oh, she could kiss him, if the idea didn't completely repel her, she really could.

He'd even gotten interviews with people who knew Rachel (and the rest of them), like it would demonstrate his dedication beyond any reasonable doubt. "Yeah, those kids are great!" slurred April Rhodes to a webcam in a surprisingly luxurious apartment. Running a successful Broadway show apparently had her living the good life. She lifted her martini glass to the camera. "Give 'em hell. But get some different costumes, you guys are underaged and you look like Times Square back when it was fun." April grinned sloppily. "I'm being responsible."

"Well, of course I'm surprised," said Jesse St. James to his webcam. It was apparently a bad connection; he kept freezing. "In general. Not about Rachel. She's such an undeniable talent that it spilling over as actual superpowers just seems like a natural outcome of being so gifted." He shrugged. "I'm sure I'll be able to run faster than the speed of sound any day, now."

Rachel laughed, then sobered at the next face. Shelby Corcoran was pale, frazzled, and clearly stressed as she spoke downward toward what was probably a laptop camera. "A statement? I suppose 'good luck,'" she said and glanced toward her living room. "Life can be crazy. It can be too much to handle just to make everyone happy, and they're deliberately taking on more?" She shook her head, and her eyes seemed to look right into Rachel's for a second. "Good luck." The sound of a crying baby cut her off. He probably should have left that one out.

Sunshine Corazon smiled awkwardly. "Yes, I know Rachel, mostly. I guess she's leading the team? She can be really nice sometimes, when she's not trying to hurt you." The page's inclusion of that video was explained with a caption from Jacob that Rachel was 'such a sexy badass.' She sighed.

Figgins looked entirely unsure of what to say, and resorted to reading from the school handbook about proper emergency procedures in case of metahuman, alien, and/or vampire attack.

Holly Holliday had watched April's clip before giving hers, apparently, because she told the kids _not_ to give up their costumes. "I know what real S &M looks like and you guys aren't anywhere near it." She hesitated. "You might be... around the corner from S&M, at most, and that's totally doable."

Will Schuester looked pained. "April, Holly, will you please stop talking about S&M?" He stared more intently at the camera. "They're good kids. They've driven me crazy sometimes, but in great ways. They deserve better than the treatment they're getting." He stared hard to the side as he finished. Either Sue was next to him or her house lay in that direction.

Giggling, Rachel scrolled through the comment pages of people talking about them. Granted, much of the discussion was along the lines of girls wanting to write fanfic about the 'two cute boys making out' while other posters ranted about the gay agenda, or saying that some of their team should be forbidden from ever wearing skintight outfits. A debate had started over whether Rachel herself was a 'butterface' or whether she'd need a boob job to qualify even for that. Hmph. It wasn't like those boys were very attractive in their profile pictures. It was horrible and offensive, but it was outweighed by positive posts... and it _was_ all attention. 

"Rachel," she heard again and looked up. Leroy stood in her doorway and looked even more serious than his husband had. "Can you promise us that you didn't have anything to do with this?"

Her finger sketched over her heart. "I swear. Jacob obsesses over me. When he saw me wearing that leather costume, well...." She spread her hands helplessly and finished, "I'm sure he's especially obsessed right now."

"I should talk to that boy's parents," Leroy grumbled. "If there's anything left of him after Sue gets done."

"She's really talking to him?" Rachel asked. That might be more potential suffering than she wanted to set Jacob up for, even as awful as he was.

"Of course. She runs a lot of this town with an iron fist." Leroy smirked. "And the rest, well, she thinks she does." That earned a bright smile from Rachel and he returned it before asking, "What were you doing, baby girl, heading out on your own like that?"

"People were going to get hurt," she said instantly, "and we could protect them."

He nodded, but waited for more.

"It was a perfect chance to test out our powers in a large team situation, under live fire," she added.

"Mmm hmm."

Rachel's shoulders sagged. "And... it served perfectly as a debut. Oh, Daddy, I want to be famous. I know you know that, but this could be my path to greatness. You know I've always had an amazing voice." As he'd taken the offer to implant real memories, he knew that as a fact: she'd _always_ had an amazing voice. Even if she barely remembered her old life, she remembered that. Plus, even after everything that had happened, when they'd returned home it still felt like walking through the door with her parents. Real or imagined, her family felt like it truly belonged to her. All she'd needed to complete things was the shot in the arm from all those Facebook comments.

"That you do," he agreed. "An amazing voice."

"But I've struggled and struggled and no one cares. We couldn't fill more than a handful of seats for our benefit concert, we lost Regionals and then we didn't even make it past the first round at Nationals... but now? We won _one fight_ and we were on the news. People know our names. I know you think that's dangerous and exactly what we shouldn't be doing, but one day it'll be safe. When that happens I want to be ready."

"So you don't want to sing?" he asked without any judgment.

Rachel, excited, leaned forward and rested her hands on his knee. "I can do everything. I saw there's already a singer and superhero out there, but I listened to some of her songs." She shook her head dismissively. She knew she wasn't a fan of the genre, and perhaps she was biased, but Rachel thought she was much better than Dazzler. "Fans of my hero identity will buy concert tickets. Fans of my music will give quotes to the newspaper when I... save people, or whatever it is that I'll do. I'll be a whole industry all on my own." 

"There have been people like that," Leroy agreed. "Metahumans who use their powers to, above all else, become famous."

She _knew_ it. It had to be a viable career path. If someone could become famous simply for dodging votes on a tropical island, or being chosen to receive someone's final rose, then of course she could become a household name with her voice. With it, she could both make records and kill bad guys. Well... she didn't want to _kill_ people. She'd knock out bad guys and have the police deal with them as appropriate. 

But Leroy wasn't done. "Worst-case scenario, those people get innocents killed. Best-case, they squander what good they could be doing because they're never willing to work unless a camera can get into position." 

"But—"

"I'm not saying you can't be famous," he continued. "If so, there wouldn't be any famous heroes, and...." He nodded at the framed Vanity Fair cover of Tony Stark she'd bought on eBay shortly after their power discovery. "But even Stark, as self-centered as he can be, ultimately wants to help people."

His words stung, as any parental criticism would. "You think I'm self-centered?" Rachel asked.

Leroy looked at her tolerantly. "You've said it yourself, Rachel."

But _she_ meant that she went after her dreams and knew she was destined for greatness. No one else was supposed to use the words, because they were different. "But...."

"It doesn't mean you're not sweet, or that you don't have good intentions. But you've been preparing yourself for a world where you have to beat everyone else to the top in public view. Only one person wins the Tony, only one song is at the top of the charts, that sort of thing. I'm just saying that it might not be as easy to pursue both of these goals as you think it will be. Not if you want to give each one its fair due." He saw her about to protest. "I can promise you, bigtime heroes don't get into competitions over how many people they personally yank to safety."

"Why?" Rachel asked. "Doesn't it make them a better hero?"

"Because it's not about selling the most singles. It's about making the best song." He chuckled as she tried to work through that obvious attempt to put things in language she'd better understand. "Okay. If you want to save the most people and get the most publicity... imagine if you saw Doc Ock on the way to go cause some trouble downtown. Do you stop him?"

"Of course," Rachel said, startled.

"Would you?" asked Leroy mildly. "Or would you let him start causing trouble first, put a lot of people in danger, and get the news cameras there? Would you really take him out quietly, before he came close to anyone? Including the media?" He leaned back. "We stopped a chemical attack in St. Louis this week. During a Cardinals game, in the middle of the stadium. No one will ever know someone tried to make a name for himself there."

Rachel stared. She'd known her fathers were agents, but had never put the pieces together of what that actually meant.

"We're not heroes, but it's the same mindset," Leroy began to say.

"It sounds like you are," Rachel interrupted.

He smiled. "Well, we just try to help. Just... do you know the name of the SEAL who shot Osama Bin Laden?" He waited for her to shake her head. "It seemed like the only news story people were talking about for a while, and you don't know his name. No one outside the military ever will. That's the extreme of what I'm telling you, and it won't be like that, but...."

Rachel swallowed. "But I still think it should be okay for me to want to be famous. You're right, I don't want to be like him."

"It is, and you don't have to be." He leaned forward and squeezed her shoulder. "Just make sure that if you go this way... if you see Doc Ock headed for a crowd, stop him before he gets there. Be a good hero. The glory'll come in time, and it's not the most important part. If it is for you, then maybe you should just focus on music. There's nothing wrong with that."

Except that she got real attention for one, and not the other. "All right," Rachel said, because she wanted the conversation to be over. She wanted to think.

Seeing a dismissal, Leroy stood. "I'll ask one more time, Rachel: did you ask Jacob about that page?"

She hesitated just for an instant. "No, Daddy."

"Okay, then. Are you remembering much about New York yet?"

"Not much." Of course, she had spent the last couple of days comforting herself with heroic daydreams, and they probably hadn't left much room for reality to creep in.

"Try. You should know where you come from." He kissed the top of her head. "So long as you remember that you'll always be our baby girl, now."

Rachel smiled at him, and squeezed his hand when it slid away from her hair. "Thanks. Love you," she said, and meant it. Maybe it would have been harder if she had examined her life more closely, but after she'd cried herself out in Finn's arms, she just wanted some return to normal. 

"Love you, too. Maybe you can go see your friends soon. You can do that, we just need to talk to their parents."

She nodded, then turned back to her sketchbook full of its horrible costume ideas. Well, no wonder she'd had trouble settling on an identity. This would be so much harder than she'd thought.

* * *

"Quinn."

Quinn ignored Judy. She pulled her hair away from her face, tilted her head thoughtfully, and considered going full Carey Mulligan. It could work.

"Quinn, you've been giving me the silent treatment for two days." Judy swallowed hard. "Please just talk to me."

A raised eyebrow in the mirror was her only response. Quinn could absolutely pull off a Carey, she decided as she turned back and forth. Who could handle the cut, though? It wasn't like her fake mother was letting her go anywhere in this fake town full of fake memories.

"We don't have anyone else," Judy said. "Please, don't do this."

After two days of that constant pleading and nagging, Quinn felt her shoulders pull tight. The silent treatment only worked if it was kept up, but.... she laughed bitterly. "Yeah, I know how it feels to 'not have anyone else.' That's how I wound up at Finn's house. And then at Puck's. And _then_ at Mercedes'." She turned to meet Judy's eyes. "Thanks for that."

"I made a mistake, Quinn." Judy reached for her. Quinn brushed her hand away. Letting it fall back to her side looked to hurt.

"So did I," Quinn said with a shrug. "Except after yours, you got to sleep in your own bed at night."

Her not-mother's jaw set. She was getting angry? Good. Quinn's mind, left to think about the father who'd kicked her out and how her friends were focused on each other instead of her, had come up with escape plans. Each one was less probable and less desirable than the last, and yet she still wanted something to happen. Maybe Judy would snap and hit her. With a bruise on her cheek she'd call CPS. They'd look into things, find out the whole stupid memories issue, and put them all in... in different homes, with different parents. Not their real ones. Never their real ones. So what was the point?

Her fierce stare faded. With it, so did Judy's. "He didn't ask me before we moved here," Judy said waveringly. Quinn stayed silent. "He just told me that we were getting pulled into this program. That we were going to adopt someone. I never got asked what I wanted."

"Sorry I'm so much trouble for you," Quinn said. Her voice was as flat as a frozen lake.

"I was afraid to say no to anything he did," Judy replied. Her eyes grew glossy. "Afraid, Quinn. You remember what he was like when things went his way, and how he could turn on you just as quickly."

Quinn felt herself start to tear up, even as she tried to fight it back. "Yes, I do remember being scared. And I had no money and no idea what was really going on. You did. So excuse me if I keep the sympathy over here, okay?"

"I was with him for years," Judy said. "Years. It feels like I never got the chance to figure out who I really was before I walked down the aisle. It happened so early because it was what I was _supposed_ to do. I certainly didn't learn who he was before that day." She tried to stroke Quinn's cheek. Quinn pulled away. "You're so beautiful, Quinn."

"I know," Quinn said darkly. She had that, now, and it seemed to be all she had on some days.

But Judy wasn't done. "And smart, and capable, and driven. More than a little brittle, too. Sometimes I worry that you'll break. I know what that's like." She looked down, but it seemed to be memories she couldn't face, rather than Quinn's gaze. "I got two Bs in high school. One in history, because I read a term project description wrong. The other was in math. The teacher didn't like girls. Otherwise... straight As."

She waited for Quinn to reply. When she didn't, Judy continued. "I was pretty, too. And then it was all that I was. I don't... I don't want you to regret like I have. Because I know I've done a terrible job of it, but I love you."

Quinn didn't say anything. The words were what she wanted to hear, but she didn't know if they could be trusted.

"Whatever happiness means, I want you to have it. Maybe you'll meet a nice boy and get married right after high school, or maybe you'll be a doctor and not even date until you're practicing." She managed to smile. "Maybe Sue will fix all of this and you'll be a superhero when it's safe. And ask your friends to come over, please. I'll stay out of the way, if it helps. I know they don't like me."

"I was alone," Quinn said. The words hurt when they came out; her throat was tight. "I remembered New York, you know? I lived on Staten Island. Everyone else at school lived closer to each other, and it was so easy to just forget me because I was on the other side of a ferry ride. They tried to include me. But it was always _making an effort._ " And they'd still been nicer than the kids at her local school. With the other _Awesomes_ , Quinn never got the feeling that there was something wrong with her. She was a simple casualty of distance. The kids in her neighborhood had been cruel, though. Her real background didn't have the dramatic physical shift she'd remembered in Ohio, but she'd certainly taken a while to come into her own. 

"That Mercedes girl came over," Judy pointed out. "And I'm sure your Cheerios friends worried that, well...." She coughed. "With how those two girls, um. Well. Maybe they wouldn't feel comfortable around me, and... I'm sorry if you've felt like you've missed out on friends." She tried brushing Quinn's shoulder, rather than cheek, and Quinn let her. "I don't know why I had to wind up with a man like I did. Sometimes things just aren't fair. But I'm really trying to make the best of it, even if I'm messing up."

Quinn folded her arms and studied the floor for a while. Judy seemed to hold her breath. Eventually, Quinn looked back up and said, "Russell was a real dick, wasn't he?"

Judy gasped, then started laughing even though she looked ashamed for doing so. "Quinn," she chided, but she was smiling. "That's... actually completely true."

"I don't know what I want to do," Quinn admitted. "I was talking to someone in the gym and we both just felt completely out of things."

"That's okay. Just know that I'll be here while you figure it out?" Judy looked so hopeful. "I really mean it." Quinn nodded and Judy breathed a sigh of relief. "Can I hug you?" It took her a while, but Quinn nodded again. She didn't know if it felt like her _mother_ hugging her, but it felt nice. "Who were you talking to?" Judy asked. "Is it someone I should invite over?"

"We've got stairs on the porch," Quinn began to explain.

"Oh. That boy in the wheelchair? We probably can't lift him past the stairs, and it might be offensive to even offer... do you want to go over to his house?"

"Relax," Quinn said good-naturedly. "I'll be okay...." Her voice died, torn between 'Judy' and 'Mom.' She trailed off rather than settle on either one, and her momentary flash of happiness faded with it. But still, she reassured Judy, "I'll be okay."


	18. Something Bigger

"You're better than this," Kurt sing-songed as he dropped his die onto the Trivial Pursuit board. It was obvious that Rachel had convinced Jacob Ben Israel to promote them to a national audience. It was also brash, irresponsible, and from the sound of it, mostly successful. The die stopped. With a sigh, he moved his marker onto the orange wedge space. He was going to get his sports question wrong, but it would be foolish to pass up that roll. 

"I'm not better than anything," Rachel said as she dug out the card. "Because I haven't _done_ anything. Where is the Cotton Bowl played?" 

The question was so nonsensical that his brain refused to move into gear. "Why would you make a bowl out of cotton?" Kurt asked, even though he knew it was a stupid thing to say.

Finn poked his head into the room. Between him being uninterested in the old Trivial Pursuit box they'd found and players who refused to let a telepath near the cards, anyway, he'd stayed clear. Rachel's words had apparently floated to him on his way to the kitchen. "Cotton Bowl's in Texas. Used to be in Dallas, now it's in Arlington."

Rachel, startled, looked between Finn and the card. "That's correct. And you even managed to cover outdated information from...." She flipped through the instruction book, then shot a dark look at Kurt. "1996. Why are we playing this?"

"Because we can't go out," he reminded her. "We can't talk to people over the phone. We can only engage in supervised activities inside the house. And well done, Finn." Kurt couldn't help himself. "You're quite the savant."

Finn hesitated before smiling. "Thanks."

"Let's play something else, at least," Rachel pleaded. "I still think it's unfair that I missed that movie wedge. I just forgot what year Titanic came out. As of now, I was right."

"Didn't Avatar make the most money?" Finn asked innocently, having apparently read her mind to get the context. "Can I play a new game? I'm so bored."

"You're certainly a font of useless information today," Kurt said. "And yes, let's find something else to do." He began to rifle through the game cabinet, but kept shooting suspicious looks at Finn. Not Taboo, not Scattergories, not Balderdash: nothing where creative thought or knowledge played a role. Living with a telepath had more than a few everyday struggles. He saw a faded Life box, grabbed it, and placed it on the coffee table. "There."

Later, when Finn frowned at a space for a child and hesitated for nearly ten seconds over choosing a blue or pink peg, Kurt finally snapped. "For god's sake, Finn, either way it's just a piece of plastic. Pick one and move."

Finn meekly put his peg into his car, then whispered to it, "Your name is Robin, like the bird or the sidekick. They're both cool."

"I have got to get out of this house," Kurt muttered and rested his head in his hands. He saw Rachel about to raise the obvious point and added, "Yours is no better. Or Mercedes'. We're still under supervision. Blaine's parents won't even let me come over, because they think 'having a known metahuman on the property could affect future insurance claims.'"

"That was very precise language," Rachel said.

"I've heard it more than once." Kurt gestured broadly at the room around them. "It's been five days! If something was going to try to kill us, don't you think we'd have seen it by now?"

"Maybe they have, and Sue just didn't tell us?" Rachel asked.

Kurt considered that, then shook his head. "When does she pass up the chance to brag?"

"Good point," Finn said.

"And we don't want to be bored," Kurt said, sliding easily back into judgmental tones. "We do silly, silly things when we're bored."

"Kurt," Rachel said.

"Things that I overhear my parents talking about on the phone."

Her glower intensified. "Kurt, stop it."

Finn looked confused. "What'd she do?"

"She got in touch with Jacob, somehow, and convinced him to pimp us out."

"I did not!" Rachel said. "And I don't appreciate the _repeated_ accusation."

Finn concentrated, then gasped and said, "Rachel, you told me you were going to the bathroom!" He turned to Kurt. "She totally emailed Jacob."

"Mmm hmm," Kurt said knowingly.

"Finn!" Rachel said, then slumped. "Well, I did go to the bathroom. Don't tell my dads, all right? They asked, I told them no... I'd get into trouble."

"Geez, Rach," Finn said after washing down a mouthful of cheese puffs. Kurt's boredom had filled the kitchen with countless homemade snacks, but Finn always went for the most processed food available. "You ever think that Sue's keeping us on the down-low for a reason?"

Kurt hesitantly raised his hand. "Don't use that term. But he's right. I want this to be over, but there must be a reason for it."

Rachel neatly avoided the topic like a politician. "I read a lot of the comments about us on Jacob's page, when my dads wanted to see if I knew about it. You and Blaine have quite the fanclub, Kurt. Lots of girls think you're incredibly cute."

"Oh," he said dryly. "So good to know they _approve._ " He paused, then grinned a bit despite himself. "We are cute."

"People are saying good stuff?" Finn asked. "That's cool, I guess."

She coughed into her hand. Kurt didn't need telepathy to know what she wasn't telling them. "Picture any YouTube video or news story online, Finn, and then the comments. I'm sure we're all fat, ugly, talentless degenerates who should still take off our clothes, and plus, vote Ron Paul." Rachel's expression confirmed his suspicions. "Thanks for that, Rachel. I definitely wanted to have my national debut come while I was wearing skintight leather."

"Technically," she countered, "you were in the choir at Nationals and in the squad at, um, other Nationals long before this ever hit the news."

Finn frowned. "You shouldn't have just decided for everyone. What if we'd gotten into trouble? Or danger?"

"You're one to talk," Rachel said. "Can we please have a little discussion about what you did?" At his confusion, she explained, "You read my mind without permission. That's a complete violation of trust."

Finn snorted. "Come on, be serious. Last time you were here you used my collectible Burger King cups without asking."

Rachel had developed excellent control over her voice. Each new note and tone came out as its own firework, and yet it all hung together as a beautiful melody. A dangerous one, that left shards of old plastic on their carpet after Kurt threw cups like clay pigeons. Wanting to keep the conversation moving, Kurt said, "They were ancient, Finn. All the paint had worn off. ...Fine, we will get you new cups."

"Maybe I shouldn't have done that," Rachel said, "and I'm sorry. But someone's mind is the most private, personal thing they have. Their thoughts and memories should be theirs unless they give you permission, or unless it's to keep people safe. And even then it can be an ethical dilemma." She looked between them. "Which you already knew, because I included worksheets on the ethics of superheroics in your booklets."

Kurt didn't bother coming up with a cover story. Nor did Finn.

Voice tight, Rachel asked, "Do you mean to say that you didn't do _any_ of your worksheets?"

"Rachel, no one did their worksheets," Kurt said. "Because they were _worksheets_ , and we are not _eight._ "

"I like you better when you're not in a bad mood," Rachel said.

"I like you better when you're not using my relationship to get people talking about you," Kurt shot back. He pointed at Finn. "You're not off the hook because we're arguing. She's right. You really should stop reading people's minds without permission, or you won't like the images you see in my brain next. I'll be creative." He wormed against his chair's back like a dog seeking a comfortable position to sleep. "I don't know why you two get to visit each other. Blaine's parents won't let him come over here, either."

"Kurt," Rachel began.

He grumbled. "I'm a city-destroying, leather-wearing bad influence, apparently."

Finn sighed heavily and stood. "I'll get one of those boring black and white movies he likes."

Kurt looked up and smiled. "Thanks, Finn. See? You don't have to read people's minds all the time."

Once they'd been left alone, Rachel scooted closer. "I'm sure his parents will change their minds soon. It was probably shocking to see him in front of all that rubble. And, of course, he followed you without telling them. Then they would have found out how you have superpowers—"

"I'm all caught up, thanks," Kurt said dryly. 

"So... does it feel strange?" she asked for a neat topic change, and nodded after Finn. "With the two of you."

"It doesn't," Kurt said. "At all. Not after that first reveal. Even if we don't remember all of those fifteen years, yet, that's a lot of time compared to just two years here. I had a brother for a lot longer than I didn't, and it's becoming easier to just slip into how we used to act." A noise at the door made him turn; that didn't sound like Finn.

Burt pointed to the phone. "Someone wants to—"

"His parents finally let him come over?" Kurt asked brightly.

"Sorry, no," Burt said and Kurt's shoulders slumped. "Just a friend. Is that fine?"

"Sure," Kurt said without asking who it was. It didn't matter. Blaine's parents hated him just because he was a superpowered government plant with a fake identity who'd torn up a major urban center. (The worst part was that every single word of that description did make him sound like genuinely terrible boyfriend material.) 

Finn returned with a movie in hand and Burt moved away when he saw them starting it. "Sure, come on over in a while," he said into the phone. Then, wisely, he left Kurt to sulk.

* * *

"I can't believe this is from the Thirties," Finn said later as he watched Katherine Hepburn square off against Cary Grant. "I didn't know they made movies back then."

"It's a little depressing to know the leopard is long dead," Rachel said sadly. "It's so cute."

"So are Hepburn and Grant," Kurt said.

"I like animals more."

The sound of the doorbell interrupted them and Burt let in their guest. With more than a little surprise, Kurt saw not Mercedes or Tina at the door, but Sam. "Hey," Sam said, waving. "My parents said it was okay if I came over here. I heard that Rachel kept visiting, and, well... two birds, one stone."

Kurt and Rachel shrugged at each other, while Finn looked happy to be around someone who might want to discuss football instead of old movies. That happiness faded when Sam made a beeline not for him, but for Kurt. "Mercedes' parents let me use their computer when I visited her, so long as I told them what I was doing. I thought you might think this was neat. Here," he said and dug out papers.

"What is this?" Kurt asked curiously as he flipped through the pages of whatever Sam had handed over.

"I pulled a bunch of stuff on the Wasp," Sam said. He leaned over to point to various paragraphs. "See?"

"I see a lot of very small print and not enough subheaders. Give me an overview of what I'm looking at."

Sam turned a few pages and a photo of a brunette woman in a sleek yellow-and-black outfit smiled back at Kurt. Finn leaned over to snoop and raised his eyebrows appreciatively, then pulled back when Rachel looked annoyed. "Janet van Dyne is a really important member of the Avengers," Sam explained. "She's smart, and can be kind of bossy, but in a good way that helps out the team."

"Does she turn into a bug?" Kurt asked dubiously. 

He grinned. "No. But she's helpful when people need it, and she doesn't take crap when they're annoying, and I just like her a lot."

"Sounds very impressive," Kurt said. "And why are we becoming the founding members of the Wasp Fan Club?"

"I was just gonna say that... she reminds me of you." Sam's smile slid comfortably lopsided. "She made all her own costumes. It was kind of a thing. She's big into fashion."

"Wait," Kurt said. His brow furrowed. Images of runways filled his head. "Wait. This Janet van Dyne is the same as the designer Janet van Dyne."

Chuckling, Sam asked, "Is that a common name?"

"Her work is _flawless_ ," Kurt said as he flipped back to the beginning and began reading more thoroughly. "There's so much gossip about her. I've seen party pictures from her apartment. Gorgeous plate glass windows overlooking the park, expensive champagne, the whole deal." He looked back to Sam and asked in disbelief, "And she's an Avenger?"

"Off and on," Sam said and shrugged. "Anyway, I just thought that was kind of neat. You know, she's this popular person in fashion and art, and she still kicks some serious behind and saves lives. Kind of like how Dazzler's both a popular musician and an X-Man," he added, gesturing to Rachel, but frowned when she didn't take the comparison anywhere close to Kurt's reaction. "Did I say something wrong?"

"Oh, I... I just had a conversation with my dad a few days ago," Rachel said uncertainly. "I need to figure out which I'm going to focus on more: music or heroics."

Sam blinked. "But you can do both. Kurt could do both!"

"Kurt's not doing both," Kurt said. "Kurt thinks Ms. van Dyne's work is inspired and appreciates _all_ of her talents, but would like the big apartment without the accompanying gore." The three all looked unconvinced and he realized it was because he didn't sound particularly convincing. "Okay, I've had fun with some of this," he said defensively. "I've also had fun in some history classes. It doesn't mean I want to catalog ancient pottery for a living."

His hands raised in surrender, Sam turned his attention entirely to Rachel. "Well, Mercedes also let me take this, and...." The trio waited for Sam to continue, but he first had to gather his nerve. "You're the captain, right?"

Rachel nodded. Finn pointed to himself, too.

"Okay, when this is over and you can go out and be a team again...." Sam took a deep breath, but he smiled when he exhaled. "I want to join."

Rachel shook her head. "Absolutely not."

Sam didn't respond immediately and dug through his bag until he could hand her something. "I knew you'd say that, but I'm totally prepared. Here. See?" Kurt frowned. Again, he didn't know what they were looking at. It appeared to be a spiral notebook with rumpled pages and a torn cover. Only after considering it for a few seconds did he identify that first, stained page and the little shred of cover that was left: it was a hero's workbook. Sam flipped past the informative printouts and got to the first worksheet.

It was completed.

"See?" he said and started paging through the other sheets. Every single one was full of blocky pencil script. "I've really thought about this. I did all of the pages. Some asked me about using my powers and so I just pretended I had some," he finished sheepishly. "It was the only way I could finish them."

"No one else finished any of these," Rachel said in disbelief. She looked almost ready to cry. Her hand shook once when she took the workbook from him. "You did every single one."

"All of your powers seem to kind of match you," Sam added. "I figured I'm a jock like Mike and Puck, and they were kind of... jock-y. So I went with those powers, okay?" he explained as he gestured to one worksheet that explained how he would face down a threat without loss of civilian life.

"But you _don't_ have those powers," Rachel reminded him gently.

"Hawkeye doesn't have powers, and he's an Avenger!" Sam protested. "Please? Come on. I want to be an Awesome." He smiled at Finn. "Which is a _great_ name, co-captain."

Finn grinned and Kurt rolled his eyes. "You are so easy to suck up to. Look, Sam, she's right. The very first time we did anything, I nearly bled my entire brain out through my nose. And if I hadn't, we would have wound up in jail."

"But," Sam began. Rachel spoke over him.

"It was even worse this last time. If Kurt hadn't hidden us with invisibility, he and I would have died. If Finn hadn't stopped that car, we would have died. If Mercedes didn't have her shields, we all would have died! And if our friends hadn't come, well." Rachel sighed. "Sam...."

"I'll take martial arts. I'll go to a secret monastery and learn how to... not breathe for ten minutes or something. I'm pretty sure there are places that teach stuff like that, right?" He looked between the three of them. "Please?"

"Dude, we did really almost die," Finn said reluctantly. He probably didn't want to turn down the one person who liked his team name. "It wasn't fun."

"Why are you doing this?" Sam asked him. "Why did you put yourself through sneaking out each night, coming up with cover stories, all of that?"

"I... don't know," Finn said. He sounded startled at being asked. "Everyone else was doing it."

Sam looked disappointed. "Rachel?"

"I want to be famous," Rachel said. "Although now I have to reconsider that."

"Kurt?" Sam asked. By that point he sounded a little desperate.

"I wanted to help people," Kurt said. It was the cheesiest answer he could possibly give. If only it weren't the truth. He sounded like a Planeteer. "First I just wanted to keep Finn from getting himself killed. Then, to keep safe the people no one cared about, and then, well. Everyone." He cleared his throat. "But when I move to New York, there will be an enormous surplus of heroes and I can—"

"Yes!" Sam said and pointed at him. Kurt pulled away. "That's what I'm talking about. I knew Mercedes couldn't be the only one of you guys with the right idea. Heroes are something bigger and better than we are, you know? We thought we were something great when we made it to Nationals, but what did we really do?"

At the dismissal of New Directions' efforts, Rachel's mouth set in offense. She didn't argue, though.

"Mercedes doesn't know if she wants to do this for life, but she knows it's _important._ And she loves that she saved the three of you in Columbus." Sam looked frustrated the longer they went without matching his enthusiasm. "Life can be so boring, even when it's going great. Other times, it can just plain suck."

"That's why I want to move to New York," Kurt said haughtily. That would fix everything. Writhing around a war zone in skintight leather would hardly fix anything, and in New York, there would be more heroes than anyone knew what to do with. They could deal with projectile cars and killer nosebleeds.

"No. No! It's not about living in Lima," Sam said. "Or any little town versus any big city. It's about... about being trapped with bills and homework and chores. Before I had to cancel my account, there were guys in my Warcraft guild from New York, Atlanta...."

"That's a video game, Sam," Rachel pointed out needlessly.

"Yeah, I know it was a game, but we still killed the Lich King and broke his hold over the undead armies of Northrend."

Kurt exchanged a glance with Rachel. Sam might as well be speaking in tongues.

"It's why I love science fiction," Sam said when he realized they didn't understand what he meant. "I love thinking that there's something _bigger_ out there. That we can have even more to look forward to than winning a big game, or even winning Nationals. You're who they write stories about, or you could be. Do you guys even realize what you could do with what you've been given?" He shot a dismayed look at Kurt. "And if you do, how could you ever want to give it up?"

All of them looked more than a little uncomfortable at his critique. Sam's shoulders slumped. Clearly, that wasn't the reaction he'd wanted. "I'd give anything to have powers like yours," he said, sounding almost hurt. "How can you guys not be totally thrilled about this?"

"Would you trade your parents for powers?" Rachel asked pointedly. 

"This isn't a game," Kurt added when her words quieted Sam. Each word only ruined Sam's expression more, but it had to be said. "Our lives have been completely turned upside down. We're at risk."

"We seriously almost died," Finn repeated yet again. "Just saying."

The trio waited patiently for an answer. Sam looked so disheartened, and Kurt did feel some remorse about ruining his good mood. He didn't understand all that... nerd stuff, but still, too few people had smiled recently. 

Between one breath and the next, Sam started grinning again. "Okay, so can I be a _sidekick?_ "

"No," Kurt and Rachel said loudly. Kurt elbowed Finn when he seemed to really consider the idea, and he followed suit. "We don't want anyone dying because of us," Kurt continued. "And you—"

"I'm not useless," Sam said.

"Of course we don't think you're useless," Rachel said. But they didn't know what else to add. Useless might be too strong a word, but he was certainly helpless.

Sam pulled back. "Fine. Guess I didn't realize how selfish my friends all were."

"Hey," Kurt said, genuinely hurt after the effort he'd put into helping Sam at the end of the school year. Just because Sam had probably filmed himself in a mock lightsaber battle didn't give him the right to criticize anyone for not being excited about superpowers.

"Have fun with your big apartment, Kurt," Sam told him bitterly. "Rachel, have fun being famous. Finn, have fun being...." Trailing off, he snorted, and Finn looked uncomfortable at how he'd never been able to give a real answer for why he was fighting. "Enjoy your movie."

He left, having apparently driven himself there.

"Come on," Finn said when they'd sat in uncomfortable silence for far too long. "Let's finish Kurt's movie, I know Rachel's dads want her back home soon."

* * *

"Porcelain," Sue said late that afternoon, nodding at Kurt as she stood at the front door of the Hummel-Hudson abode. It was a bizarre sight, like seeing Santa Claus on Venice Beach. She was back to wearing her normal track suit, but the bag she had looked intriguingly official. "Your house is next on my list. Is your brother available or is he busy carrying Fay Wray up the Empire State Building?"

It took Kurt a second to respond. He'd never considered that she would come to their house to talk to _Finn._ Sue snapped her fingers at him so closely that it felt like she might break off his nose and Kurt, jolted, said, "Yes, he's in his room. I'll go get him."

"Hurry up," she said. "I have rounds to finish today and I have to check off everyone. If Nurse Ratched can set that pace, I can match it."

Kurt knew better than to comment on the idealization of one of cinema's great villains; he'd learned that lesson when he'd done a double-take at her saying that Glenn Close should be applauded for turning that rabbit into a tasty meal. He hurried upstairs, apologized to Finn for sending him into the line of fire, and then settled in to his room after a quick explanation to their parents.

He'd fallen into the latest Elle when a knock sounded on his doorframe. Looking up, he saw Carole there. "Sue's done with Finn and she wants to talk to you."

"How bad is it going to be?" Kurt asked wryly, setting aside his magazine. "I only know the version of her that doesn't carry a gun."

"Finn doesn't seem too traumatized," Carole said. "I'm sure she just wants to make sure that everyone's stories match up."

Steeling himself, Kurt walked downstairs to join Sue in the living room. She was inspecting a photograph on the mantle. "Funny, isn't it?" she asked him as she tilted the frame to show a childhood picture of Kurt. "You never think about all the support staff necessary to pull off a job like this."

"I'm sorry?" Kurt asked. He had the feeling he'd walked into the middle of something.

"Where do you think this came from?" Sue asked and tapped the picture's glass. Oh, of course; there was no way that photo was real. "I'll tell you where it came from: we have great graphics people. They ran your face through age-regression software, mapped it onto a child's body doing... hopscotch, apparently, and composited it with the sort of suburban streetscape that you don't see in Manhattan. Boom, instant knick-knack for an unremarkable house in the middle of nowhere."

Kurt frowned at the description. It was a _nice_ house in the middle of nowhere.

She actually seemed cheerful as she gestured around the living room. "And I know this place was bought and decorated after you moved here, but what about your old house? Once you found out about this, did you ever stop to consider just how hard it'd be to get all those homes ready in a couple days' time?"

"I suppose not," Kurt admitted. It was easier to focus on the part of S.H.I.E.L.D. that did their work with guns blazing, but a convincing cover was important. Still.... "If I might ask, why are we talking about interior design?"

"A gay fetus doesn't want to discuss interior design," Sue said to herself. "Interesting." Kurt generally knew better than to react to her and she grinned after a few seconds of his silence. "So. When'd you find out about your powers?"

"On the last day of school." Kurt told the truth, as he suspected lying would be painful at best. "Artie was the first one. He accidentally activated all of our powers, and Finn read my mind right after school that day. We were surprised, to say the least."

"Hmm." Sue's gaze flicked up and down his body. Kurt was glad he hadn't taken the liberty of sitting. "What did you do prior to this Columbus escapade?"

He told her everything: their failed first night, how injured he'd gotten, and how he'd been left out of action until he healed up. He continued with the training missions he'd run after that and finished with their grand debut on the media stage. "That's about it, I suppose," he eventually said.

Sue eyed him oddly. "Aren't you supposed to be stealthy?"

"I suppose so?" Kurt replied. Had he said something wrong?

"I expected you to prevaricate a little more," Sue said and took a seat on a couch's armrest. Kurt remained standing. "Cover your back."

"I assumed you would know," Kurt said. "Carole says you're good. Besides, we've probably already hit the major 'in trouble' threshold with what happened in front of the cameras."

"Huh," Sue said, and really seemed to consider him like she hadn't seen him before. "Good assessment."

He shouldn't feel so pleased every time he got a bit of praise from Sue Sylvester, but it was just so damned hard to earn. Kurt smiled without trying to hide it. To be fair, he did get more kind words from her than most people at that school: her having faith in his talent, looking out for him when Burt was in the hospital and when he was in danger. Even working with her sister's funeral had felt like some odd but real connection. 

Why, though? His existence was just as fake as the rest of the club's. She occasionally praised Quinn or Santana, but it was in the role of them doing something for her. There was no logical reason for Sue Sylvester to be nice to him, whether she was a much-decorated cheerleading coach or an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

"Whatever you're thinking," Sue said, "spit it out. I can see sparks about to fly from your ears."

"Coach Sylvester? Why have you been nice to me?" Kurt laughed once and amended, "That is, to your particular definition of 'nice.'"

"I am capable of showing limited affection to a few people worthy of it," Sue said. "The jury's still out on you, but hey, I've said: I'm bored. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt until I figure it out for sure." Yes, Kurt thought that qualified as 'nice' when it came from her. When it became apparent that he actually wanted an answer, she leaned back and asked, "Honestly?"

Oh, what a minefield that word was when it involved Sue Sylvester. Steeling himself for whatever she might say, Kurt nodded. 

"Being a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent is the best, most important thing I've done with my life, and you were the kid who'd be the best match for joining up." Sue smirked at his surprise. "What, shocked that I care about doing any good? Don't get me wrong: I expect to be duly rewarded upon completing my missions. I enjoy being showered in glory by my peers like most people enjoy watching C-list celebrities attempt ballroom dancing."

"Sorry," Kurt said. "My life goals don't include being stuck in Lima version two-point-oh as I lie to a bunch of brainwashed kids."

"Oh, I hate this project," Sue said.

"And us, we know," Kurt said, rolling his eyes.

"I don't hate you. I am often _annoyed_ by you, or bewildered when you show up on campus under the apparent misconception that you can pull off being shrink-wrapped in plaid, but I want to keep you kids alive." Sue leaned back. "That's what I've done: keep people alive. By my estimate, about twelve million."

Kurt's eyes widened before he could help it.

"Like I said," Sue said, digging casually through her pocket and then offering him a stick of gum. It was probably enhanced with some godawful vitamins and hormone supplements, and so he turned it down. "I've disarmed bombs. Foiled supervillains. Those blast radiuses were going to be big, and a whole lot of people were going to die. They didn't. Sure, they're just aimless drones who don't have a thought in their head besides whether Ashton is going to live up to Charlie's masterpiece performance, but, you know." Sue shrugged. "They have families they're trying to provide for. I can respect that."

"You've really saved that many people?" Kurt asked in disbelief.

"Eh," she said with a shrug. "After your first million, it all starts to blur together."

"Oh," Kurt said quietly. Sam's printouts filled his vision: the fashion designer and superhero Janet Van Dyne, living in a glamorous New York apartment and still helping people in need. S.H.I.E.L.D., doing whatever it took to save tens of millions of lives. There was an entire world out there and one of its top agents thought he fit right into it.

He didn't want to be a superhero. He... he _didn't._ It was a funny feeling, though, to have people who thought he should. "Coach Sylvester, then why did you take this job if you knew it would be a poor match? Did they order you to come here?"

"No," Sue said. "No, I didn't volunteer, but I agreed when they asked me."

"Why?" Kurt wondered. She seemed to love being an agent more than anything. Was it a love with a limited shelf life, perhaps? Was it something that no one would really want to do for all their life?

"My sister was getting weaker," Sue said after a long pause. Her voice was thick. "If I took this assignment, I could see her every day." She sat in silence for a while and Kurt didn't interrupt her. "I watched the video of what happened in my office."

His mind went straight to how they'd kissed and Kurt blushed. "Sorry. We made sure to stop before we got too—"

"Not that," Sue said, grimacing. "I was horrified when I saw his oil slick of a head moving toward you. All I could picture was you floundering on a beach like some sea bird after the Exxon Valdez spill. Unless," she allowed, "the light reflecting off your frosting-white skin blinded the Valdez before it could make a landing."

Oh. "I know you said our powers are unstable," Kurt ventured, "but I do normally have better control over my illusions." She looked blankly back and he explained, "When my outfit started changing?"

"I didn't see any changes, because your illusions are psychic. They're obviously not going to come across to a camera." Sue snorted at his surprise. "You kids are operating blind but think you know everything. Abrams is still convinced that he's going to make sex robots."

His blush remained in place. Sue's praise might be rare pearls, but it also softened him up so that her criticism stung more. "Then what _are_ you talking about?"

"When you blew off the entire idea of working with your powers on anything but a limited basis. I saw you assure that overly groomed boyfriend of yours that you were going to hang up your swords in exchange for subway tokens and an everything bagel." Sue looked him over again. "Is that what you really want, or is that what a temporary version of you _used_ to want? Look, if you want to take the easy route I won't _blame_ you. I'll insult you every chance I get, but I won't be mean."

"What's the difference?" Kurt asked in open confusion.

"The second involves a flamethrower." Sue put her elbows on her knees and leaned forward. "I thought I saw something in you that worked well with the agency. I hate to be wrong. And you are currently living a life based on lies, so you need to figure out what feels real."

This was so much longer than she'd spent talking to Finn. Kurt inhaled, nodded, and exhaled. "I feel real. I know my past is fake, but I still feel real. My family feels real. Blaine feels real, and my friendships with Rachel, Mercedes, Tina... it all feels real."

"And saving people's lives?"

Kurt swallowed and remembered two frightened mutant women. "That feels... really real."

"So what's your big life plan?" Sue asked. She imbued every word with derision, preemptively mocking the sort of dreams Kurt Hummel typically clung to.

"I still want to live in the city. I want the big apartment, the parties, the champagne." As Sue began to look away in what might be disgust or even disappointment, Kurt hesitantly continued, "But... but Sam stopped by to tell me about someone. The Wasp? She has all of that and she—"

"Saves lives," Sue agreed.

And that sounded pretty much perfect. Her own fashion line, her own grand apartment, and people who owed their lives to her existence. Seriously, it was _perfect._

It just wasn't what he'd said his life would be.

Seeing his indecision, Sue leaned over to unzip her bag. "I brought something for you."

"You did?" Kurt asked and tried to refocus. What could Sue Sylvester possibly bring for him? Would it hurt? It would probably hurt.

"The reason I thought you'd be the best match was partially due to your powers," Sue said. "Quinn also has the personality for this, but people with powers like hers are typically put in technicolor spandex and shoved out in public. Yours match the S.H.I.E.L.D. mission, just like Mister Sulu's. But inside, he's not cut from the right cloth."

"Meaning?" Kurt asked. He wasn't sure what it meant to have the right personality for S.H.I.E.L.D.

"You're strong on your own when you need to be," Sue added. A dark cast moved across her eyes, and she added, "That's important for people at the top."

No wonder she'd taken a mission that would put her near her sister, Kurt thought, and watched her quietly retrieve two leather sheaths from her bag. "This was part of my standard gear, but I hate edged melee. I'm an expert, of course, but it's not my style. Give me a Glock any day of the week." Seeing his hesitance, Sue extended her arm. "Take them."

"Wait, you're giving these to me?" Kurt asked in shock as he took the two swords, and stared at them.

"I never use them and they're a hell of a sight better than those ren faire rejects you had in the videos." Sue shrugged. "Yeah, take them."

They gave the impression of being incredibly well-made and expensive. Kurt set one down on the couch almost reverently, then drew the other from its sheath. The metal of the sword gleamed like platinum, and when he tapped a fingernail against it, it sounded as hard as ceramic. He wondered what they were made of. "These are for me?" he asked again in disbelief. They didn't just look dangerous, they were beautiful.

"For the last time, yes. They were just cluttering up my house. Take them and shut up."

"I don't know how to use a... katana?" Kurt ventured, looking at the blade with a slight curve. 

"Wakizashi," Sue corrected. "Shorter. Nice length to strap to your back. And yes, you do. Your powers include weapons mastery, annoyingly. You'll be decent with pretty much anything you pick up, and will be good with far less training than's fair." She gave him a bit to stare in wonder at the sword, which really was more like art than just some simple weapon. "So. You can either hang them up as a charming piece of cultural appropriation and go back to discussing how this season's models are heifers who need to stop eating those extra raisins... or you can use them. Up to you."

"But we're not supposed to use our powers," Kurt said. It was the perfect way to dodge the issue.

Sue smirked at him. "You know perfectly well that won't last forever, Porcelain. Go try cutting up a tomato. They're better than a Ginsu."

She let herself out.

"Dude," Finn said when he came to join Kurt, having heard the closing door. "She gave you something? That's not fair, she didn't give me anything. Those are awesome swords. Are you really going to use them?"

Kurt stared at where the two sheaths were resting in an X across his knees. Was he really going to use them, he repeated as his fingertips traced down the long leather length of one blade's cover. "I don't know."

* * *

"Again?" Kurt asked when Rachel walked through their front door the next morning.

"I wanted to see my boyfriend and best friend," Rachel said as Carole turned locks behind her. "What's wrong with that?"

"Besides the fact that you _can?_ " Kurt answered morosely, then boggled when she pulled out a cell phone. "You are kidding me. Is this what being the daughter of _two_ agents gets you?"

"Hi," Rachel said when Finn walked in, and kissed him. But then she went right back to looking at her phone and sighing. "There's only one unlocked number on this, so don't be jealous. I've been putting off the call."

"To who?" Finn asked. They both looked at him; he tapped the side of his head and grinned. "I'm not looking at your brain."

She smiled, a weak flash. "Well, Sue did get Jacob's Facebook page about us taken down."

"And?" Kurt prompted. That clearly wasn't the end of the story.

"He's apparently still insistent about getting the message out for me," Rachel said sheepishly. "A man with a mission. I probably shouldn't have signed my email 'love.'"

"Ew, Rachel," Finn said.

"I'm sorry! I didn't think he'd go this far. Now he has his own website for us, it's hosted in another country, and he's not in control any more. Ownership keeps rotating between some people he met who hate 'government censorship' and aren't big fans of Facebook, either." At their questioning looks, Rachel shrugged. "I'm not sure, my dad just said they were anonymous. They're really hoping I can rein things in."

Kurt shot Finn a look as Rachel reluctantly dialed. _Bet we don't want to know the sort of personal information he's been spreading._ Finn didn't look worried, so Kurt added, _You realize he is a creepy stalker with an entitlement complex a mile wide. He's probably painting her boyfriend as increasingly awful the longer this goes on._

Finn grimaced and listened in to the conversation that had started up without them.

"But can't you just tell them to delete it?" Rachel asked. "I know you don't know the other people personally, but this is a big deal. I don't care if they just think it's funny to defy the government! It's not a joke. We could be in danger. There's something going on and we really shouldn't have all that information about our powers and... no, the government is not standing over my shoulder right now, Jacob. Kurt is. No, 'Kurt' is not a code word for anything, I'm actually talking about him. He looks annoyed."

"Take down any gross comments," Kurt said loudly. "You owe us that much, Ben Israel."

Rachel's fist clenched at whatever Jacob said next. "Jacob, stop. Jacob! We are not being coerced into... I don't care if those other people are having fun with running the site, stop them!" She looked dismayed. "How did they even find that mattress commercial? Look. Enough is enough. If you don't take that site down, I swear I will hate you forever. My last moment on earth will be to curse your name." Her expression flattened further. "No. It's not romantic that I'd be thinking of you then. Just do it!" she finished and hung up.

"That went great," Finn said.

After allowing herself one long groan, Rachel's expression brightened. "Let's be fair," she said. "We were already on the news. How much worse will this _really_ be?"

Though Finn seemed convinced, Kurt folded his arms and said, "Well, let's see. Before, we were just presented as the latest teen group to try their hand at heroics. Now, in case anyone creepy was wondering if we were the _right_ teen group they wanted? They know the government is trying to hide us." His words dismayed Rachel, and Kurt decided to pull back just a bit. "Look... Jacob went overboard. You asked him to stop and he ignored you. So now, when Coach Sylvester applies the thumbscrews to get him to really talk, it'll be all his fault."

She managed to laugh. "He is a bit of a loose cannon." 

"Exactly," Kurt said, and then waved them up the stairs. "Now: mingle, because you just gave me precedent." Without further explanation, he chased down Carole. "Hi!" Kurt said hopefully. "Rachel just got to call someone on the phone, and I wanted to see if I could, too." Before she could argue, he said, "It's nearly a week since that meeting and I haven't even been able to talk to him. Please?"

"I suppose a phone call won't hurt," Carole eventually said. "Use the one in the kitchen and stay in there. I won't listen in, but if Sue finds out I can say I had everything under control."

He hugged her. "Thank you, thank you, I've been losing my mind." Hurrying in before she could withdraw permission, he grabbed the phone and punched in Blaine's number so forcefully that it felt like he might break the buttons. "Yes, it's really me," he said when Blaine excitedly asked if the caller ID was accurate. "I got permission to call. Say something, I miss your voice."

"You have to say something, I miss your voice," Blaine said right back and they laughed over their impasse. "What have you been doing?"

"Just hanging around the house," Kurt said. They both started bringing up any minutia that was even remotely notable. As they talked, Kurt picked up the sword he'd absent-mindedly started carrying. Some corner of his mind had wanted to get a feel for what it felt like to bear that weight. He palmed the slick leather, passed it from hand to hand, and then attached it to his belt so he'd stop distracting himself. "How much do your parents hate me?"

"They have a problem," Blaine reluctantly said. "But I did hear my dad say that he was glad someone stopped those men in Columbus, so I really think they can get over it. And Mom called you a hero."

Kurt grinned. "Really?" That word had to be a good thing.

"Mmmhmm. In the context of thinking it was very strange that I was dating one, but I still heard the term. They wanted to know everything you could do. I mentioned the swords and the illusions. I skipped the flexibility."

"Blaine," Kurt giggled into the phone. "You need to stop acting like it's so dirty."

"You knew exactly what you were doing when you showed me that move." Blaine's pitch dropped a bit, which made Kurt wish he had a phone cord to twirl coquettishly around his finger. "You must have ideas."

"I... someone might be listening in, we should change topics," Kurt said as his face flushed hot. "Any headway on them thinking I'm an insurance risk?"

"Not yet," Blaine said. "But if they're calling you a hero, there's hope."

"I guess that's true." Leaning against the wall, Kurt found it surprisingly easy to accept the rare positives in his life. Hearing his boyfriend's voice after so long bolstered his spirits like nothing else. "It's sort of funny, actually. Coach Sylvester came by and insulted me, but then she sort of... complimented me. If I develop a case of whiplash, I'm blaming her." 

"I didn't know she was capable of offering compliments, from how you've described her," Blaine said with good humor. "At least that's something good. What did she say?"

"It was completely ridiculous, actually. She thought I'd be a good match for joining S.H.I.E.L.D." He waited to hear hearty laughter on the line. When Blaine didn't offer any, Kurt picked up the slack. The sound was as flimsy as a cheap windchime.

The second he went silent again Blaine asked, "You told her no, right?"

"I... mostly. She's intimidating! She talked about flamethrowers."

"See?" Blaine pointed out, very reasonably. "Just remember that S.H.I.E.L.D. means Sue Sylvester with a flamethrower, and lying to you about your past. That doesn't sound very fun to me."

"Living a charmingly bohemian lifestyle until we get a big break and become famous and successful sounds fun," Kurt agreed, reciting one of the sillier paths they'd discussed in their grand plans about the future. "And arguing over a cat."

"As I've said before, Siamese are incredibly personable and clean. I had one when I was younger and you would have _loved_ her, Kurt."

"The only cat I would ever consider are those evil-looking hairless ones," Kurt said. Blaine knew perfectly well that he was not about to allow any shedding on his wardrobe. "And they, well, look evil." 

"They make lint brushes for a reason!" Blaine argued, laughing.

"You know what doesn't need a lint brush? Fish."

"Yes, there's nothing I'd look forward to more at the end of a long day than giving my goldfish a hug."

Kurt smiled. "You can hug snakes, you know. They'll wrap around you and hug you right back." He could imagine the shudder that earned; it was a mild enough phobia to joke about, but still a phobia.

"You can keep a snake inside your closet," Blaine countered, "as a _belt_... and I'll make sure to keep the doors closed so the cat stays _outside_."

The easy banter put a smile on Kurt's face, but it soon dropped off. He found himself unable to hold back his next words. "Rachel's dads are both S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and so was Carole. They're all nice." He could imagine Blaine's disappointed expression. The silence was more telling than a sigh. "Would it really be so bad?"

"Kurt—"

"You're supposed to figure out your path in high school," Kurt said defensively. "People go through lots of interests. And I love fashion, performing, and... and possibly weapons. I'm good. I might be able to be great. And I could help people!" He pictured Sam giving him a goofy thumbs-up and tried his best to focus.

"I thought you were going to die!" Blaine said, voice anguished, and Kurt stopped arguing. "Tina was keeping me in that van when I wanted to come help you. But she was right: even if I had gotten out, I couldn't have done anything. You could have been killed and I wouldn't have been able to lift a finger to stop them. Why would you want to...." He sounded almost ready to cry when he spoke next. Kurt found himself tearing up, too. "Just listening to you in danger nearly drove me out of my mind. I haven't been able to talk to you in nearly a week and you call to tell me you really want to get yourself killed? You're so talented at so many other things. Why _this?_ "

"I...." Kurt trailed off, uselessly.

"They can get other agents to carry out whatever mission comes up. _You_ can't be replaced. Please," Blaine said and it sounded like he'd finally lost the battle against his tears. "At least think about that. Think about how you'd feel if someone was coming for my life and you could only watch. Weigh that against what we talked about _together._ "

Kurt leaned against the wall. As he didn't yet trust his voice, he didn't reply. Blaine continued, "I don't care if you're not from Ohio. I don't care what your last name really is, or which of them you want to use. I don't even care if you dated every boy in New York City—"

"I haven't," Kurt said quickly. At least he knew that much. "Finn looked at my memories."

"But I wouldn't _care_ ," Blaine said. "Because I know you now, and I am madly in love with that boy. I don't want to lose him to some thug with something to prove and have nothing more left than a folded flag and a medal."

The phrasing put him in mind of Christopher Hudson, and he looked guiltily toward those medals before Kurt remembered that such a man had never existed. Nor had his supposed birth mother, but his and Finn's pain had still felt very real. He would never want to put someone through pain like that, and allowed himself a wave of it to serve of a reminder of just what he'd be doing to Blaine. That was what it had felt like when he went to his mother's funeral. He let the memory, false though it was, linger. That was what it had felt like to see her as a corpse. And that was what it had felt like when the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. told him his parents were dead.

Kurt froze. What? There was a large man with an eyepatch, holding photographs in his hands. Photographs that would show a man and a woman who.... "Blaine, I... I think I need to go."

"Are they making you get off?" Blaine asked regretfully. 

"No, I'll call you later, and I... I just... I need to talk to Finn. I think I'm remembering my parents," Kurt said in shock.

Thankfully, Blaine didn't argue for a second. "Go. I'll want to hear everything, but until then, I love you and goodbye."

"Bye," Kurt said distantly and hung up without realizing he should have added an 'I love you' of his own. His mother had dark hair and eyes paler than his. Her name was Margaret, which she always hated until she heard her young son add, "Like the princess!" Kurt kept trying to get her to wear different clothes, just as he'd made over Carole, but she thought it would be a silly waste of money when she wore a lab coat all day.

He wobbled. Had he blocked them on purpose, or had someone else put extra shields around his family? Other memories had come back so much more smoothly and now it felt as if a dam had burst. Margaret had loved him dearly, but never played favorites. She loved Finn just as much. Still, she wound up spending more time around Kurt, because—

His hand splayed against the wall as a fresh wave of dizziness nearly knocked him over. Luke. Luke Hutton, with his coppery hair and dark brown eyes. A broad smile, terrible jokes, and unbearable awkwardness when... when....

A headache started pounding between Kurt's eyes. It felt almost like his old illusion headaches, but it came entirely from trying to make sense of what he was remembering. "I have to talk to Finn," he muttered and scrambled upstairs. What he was remembering didn't make any sense: Luke had always been awkward when Kurt's _boyfriend_ came over.

But Finn had looked at his memories and said that Kurt didn't have a boyfriend in New York. Had someone locked that away and Finn had missed it? Or had someone altered his memories since then? Or, Kurt wondered for an even more unpleasant final option, had Finn lied? "Hey," he said shakily when he pushed Finn's door open. Rachel pulled away from Finn, blushing, but he ignored her. "I need to ask you something."

"Knock next time," Finn muttered and tried to point subtly at Rachel.

"Did you lie to me about whether I'd had a boyfriend in New York?" Kurt asked, his voice close to cracking.

As Finn stammered, Rachel turned and looked at him in shock. "Finn?"

"Why would you think I'd lied to you?" Finn asked and laughed nervously.

"Because I remember Dad and he didn't like my boyfriend," Kurt said. With each word, he was more confident in his recollection. "I did. I had a boyfriend, Finn. These aren't just dreams, they're memories." He rounded on Rachel. "Try to remember. Can you picture me when I was younger?"

She focused on Kurt. Finn tried to speak over them, but they ignored him. "I... all right, I'm picturing your old hair style. You're younger, and shorter, and... and I can see you in a classroom I've never been in before," Rachel said, nodding. "Although I suppose I _have_ been in it."

"Guys!" Finn said urgently.

"He was taller than me," Kurt said. "And just... just _bigger._ "

"Double dates," Rachel said, and Kurt gasped and pointed at her. Yes, she was right: she and Finn had gone on countless dates with Kurt and... and.... Her hand covered her mouth and her eyes grew very large. "What I'm remembering doesn't make any sense," Rachel said.

"Oh," Kurt said in a tiny, frightened voice as he remembered bulky arms encircling him. Hazel eyes fluttering closed. A strong hand threading through his hair, and a horrifyingly familiar voice whispering against his ear. "Oh no. No, no, _no._ " Not _him._ "This is impossible," he said as he remembered Puck— _Puck_ —trailing his mouth down Kurt's arched throat. "This is... why?" he asked Finn.

"You can't remember him, okay!" Finn said helplessly. "You're happy, I didn't want him to ruin it! He ruins things!"

"You lied to him about what was in his own head?" Rachel asked. "Finn, that's incredibly wrong! You don't get to make that decision for anyone."

As the two of them began to argue over the ethics of telepathy, Kurt found himself staring blankly at the far wall. Noah Puckerman had been his first boyfriend? Puck, who he knew for a fact was straight? Who, oh god, he'd _assured_ Blaine was straight and certainly not interested in him? He'd just told Blaine that he was Kurt's first, and that had been a lie?

He remembered a warm smile at the end of a hard class. Puck was smarter than he gave himself credit for, at least when he tried.

He'd stepped in when someone began to press Kurt on the subway. Especially when he was younger, Kurt looked like an easy target. Puck didn't, though, and Finn wasn't always around. 

It was easier to find privacy at Puck's. First Puck peeled off his shirt, and then Kurt's, as the two of them—

"No," Kurt almost sobbed. No, he couldn't have lost _that_. "No." His anguished cry interrupted Finn and Rachel's argument and both turned to him. "I...." he began, but had no idea what to say next. His mind was filled with horrifyingly pleasurable memories, but the worst part was his heart. It wasn't just sex. He had been madly and totally in love with Puck.

As the physical memories ran through Kurt's mind, Finn went very pale. A thin layer of sweat beaded his top lip and he looked ill. But it was nothing compared to the horror on his face when Kurt remembered being in love. "You can't!" Finn shouted, and just for an instant his eyes glowed purple vibrant enough to match any neon sign.

They faded. With them, so did Kurt's unearthed memories about love. He knew that he had dated Puck, and that he'd loved him and even lost his virginity to him, but it could have happened to someone else. It was like reading a fact in a textbook. "What the hell did you just do?" he snarled.

"I...." Finn hesitantly reached up and rubbed his temple with his fingertips. "I don't know."

"Finn?" Rachel asked.

"I don't know!" Finn said desperately, turning to her. "His brain is the easiest for me to look into, and I just... I just put up walls without knowing what I was doing, and—"

"You did another memory block on Kurt," Rachel said in horror. "Finn!"

He had to get out of there, Kurt thought as he tried to fight back hysterical sobs. He knew that as certainly as he'd known it on the night he fled from Burt. Leaving behind an illusion of himself as they argued, he unsheathed the sword at his hip and sliced open the screen in Finn's window. An alarm blared. It took them a few precious seconds to realize what was happening, and Kurt already knew that he could run across the roof, leap for that sturdy branch, and land safely on the grass. Even in his daze, he didn't stumble once on his way to the street.

A Winnebago drove by. Kurt, secure in his agility and utterly single-minded in his focus, grabbed its ladder. He knew they'd be looking for him, and that they could see him if they looked through a video camera, but he planned to move quickly.

There was someone he needed to talk to.


	19. Out in the Open

Rachel spun to face the door when she heard footsteps pounding toward it. Burt and Carole were there, wide-eyed. "What happened?" Carole shouted over the alarm screaming through the hallway. It was a wonder Rachel had heard their approach.

"Kurt ran away again," Rachel said loudly. "He cut open the screen."

"That damn sword," Carole said and pointed Burt downstairs. He hurried to turn off the alarm. "Where did he go? Do you know?" 

The question was directed mostly at Finn, but he'd been too deeply shocked to read Kurt's mind. He was clearly guessing as he said, "Um, he probably went to Puck's." The words were very loud in the sudden silence when the alarm stopped.

"Puck's?" Carole repeated, surprised. "Why would he go there?"

When Finn couldn't find the right words, Rachel took over. "He remembered how he and Noah used to be romantically involved." Burt returned just in time to hear that, and he looked as shocked as Carole. "Which... S.H.I.E.L.D. would have told you two? Or at least you?" Rachel asked Burt. They had to have at least hinted at it.

"The punk with the mohawk?" Burt asked in disbelief. 

Apparently not, then.

"Yeah," Finn said reluctantly, and tapped the side of his head so they'd know he was telling the truth. Burt and Carole boggled at him, then each other.

"He'll probably be fine out there," Carole said, "but we have to let Sue know."

"What if Finn hurt him?" Rachel asked before Carole left and everyone looked to her for an explanation. "Finn used his powers to alter Kurt's mind before he ran off, and I doubt even he knows exactly what he did."

"Finn?" Burt asked, sounding worried and more than a bit angry.

"You think I could have hurt him?" Finn asked Rachel. "Really?"

"You attacked his brain and then he broke violently out of a secured location; for all we know, you lobotomized him!" Realizing she'd snapped those words and left Burt and Carole looking terrified, Rachel attempted damage control. "He looked in command of himself," she said. "It... it was an illusion, but the illusion looked fine."

"God," Carole muttered. "I'll go call Sue. Burt, you handle this with the Puckermans, so they know Kurt's coming and can keep him from running off again."

Burt and Rachel both got to work on that. Finn, looking frightened of messing up with someone else, stayed out of their way.

* * *

"I think I'm gonna go outside," grandly said Sarah Puckerman.

"Great," Puck said and blew away a Nazi. His Xbox was disconnected from the network. He could only play versus the machine, and it sucked.

"I'm going to ride my bike up and down the street," she continued, putting her face right next to his ear, "and go wherever I want, and talk to whoever I want."

"Awesome," Puck said.

"And then I'm gonna call my friends on the _phone_ , and bike to the store and get a—hey!" she protested as Puck picked her up like she weighed nothing, put her outside his door, and shut it. "Mom!" she shouted. "Noah's being mean!"

"Leave your brother alone, Sarah. Go play with your friends." The door opened again, and he looked over to see his mother standing there. 

Being trapped practically had him twitching inside his skin. Lauren had come over a couple of times, but they were annoyingly supervised. You couldn't have _fun_ when you were supervised. Mike had stopped by, saying things were tense at his place, but him leaving after a full day of movies and gaming had just reminded Puck how he couldn't fire up his account with the guys like usual. As for everyone else.... 

He understood that Finn and Rachel would want to see each other first, even if he'd wanted them to visit. Worse than that, though, was the feeling that he wanted _Kurt_ to visit. There was only one explanation for wanting to see him, and Puck didn't want to spend more time considering Bowie. So he hadn't thought about Kurt. At all. 

But... had Blaine been able to come over to Kurt's house, like Lauren had been able to visit Puck? If so, had they been so strictly supervised?

Shit. Why was he thinking about that? Why did it matter? 

Puck forced himself to focus on his mother's face. "Do you have any idea how much longer this is gonna go on?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but was interrupted by the ringing phone. After excusing herself, she returned with the phone in hand and a very surprised expression. "It's Burt, Finn and Kurt's dad. It sounds like there's an emergency."

Puck leaned forward. "Is... are they okay?"

"Here," she said, extending the phone. "They think it'll be faster to just talk to you."

Startled, he took it. "Hello?"

He heard Rachel's voice, which was weird, but Puck tried not to let himself get distracted from whatever this emergency might be. "Noah, have you been at your house all day?"

"Yeah," he said. "What's going on? Why are you on the phone?"

"I said I knew the most about what was going on and they gave me the handset. Finn is completely lost and their parents didn't see what happened. Is Kurt there yet?"

Puck froze. "What?"

"Kurt broke out of the house and we're fairly sure he's on the way to see you. They're _not_ happy about this and it sounds like Sue is being put on his trail. I can't even imagine how much trouble he's going to be in, or maybe it'll be all Finn—"

"Rachel," Puck said until she shut up. "Why is Kurt heading _here?_ "

After only a breath's hesitation, she said, "He remembered how the two of you used to date in New York, and then Finn put another psychic block on him. We have no idea what sort of state his mind is in, Noah. Finn could have done real damage, he's not practiced with this. Kurt could just be angry, but he could also be disoriented, he could have lost _all_ of his memories down to who he is... we have no idea how bad this is. When he arrives, you need to keep him there. Okay?"

"We were together," Puck said blankly. His mind felt like Tetris pieces sliding into place. Finally, every weird little piece of the past month fit into one perfect story, and then that wall vanished.

They'd been together. Really, totally together. He'd spent so much time trying to figure out what was happening, and then to avoid thinking about it. After being handed the answer, all that mental energy had an outlet. Everything made sense. Absolutely everything.

"I'm sorry for springing this on you if you didn't remember, but—"

"No," Puck said distantly and sat on his bed. "I remember. Okay. I'll keep him around until Sylvester or his dad gets here, whatever. Don't worry. Later." He hung up and handed the receiver back to his mom, who looked at him sympathetically. 

"You sound ready to pass out. I'll keep Sarah out of your hair, don't worry."

"Mom?" Puck asked her. (He'd reconsidered using 'Mom' for a few short minutes after finding out the truth, but she still felt like it and it seemed like too much trouble to reassess what they were to each other.) "Did you know about me and him?" Wait, had that just been coming out to his mom? Or would she have gotten that from listening to him on the phone? He was dizzy. This was hard.

"No," she said, but didn't seem too broken up about it. After getting his best friend's girlfriend pregnant right upon moving there, Puck supposed a lot of other relationships would look pretty good in comparison. "This group of kids sure does look like Bravo," she said lightly and he knew that things were really okay between them. "But I guess you _are_ a show choir from New York."

"Yeah," Puck said uncertainly. He was fairly sure that was the end of their big talk. They didn't do emotions in the Puckerman house. "Thanks."

She ruffled his hair affectionately, kissed him on his bare scalp, and told him she'd keep an eye out for Kurt. Then she unlocked his window, just in case Kurt decided to break in like he'd broken out. "Let me know if he does come in this way," she said and then left Puck to his memories.

There were so many, and they felt more real than the room around him.

* * *

Rachel Berry was Noah Puckerman's second girlfriend, at the ripe old age of twelve. (He was an early bloomer. She called herself precocious.)

Twenty minutes into lunch, Puck wanted to throw himself into the deep fryer. She _never shut up._ They'd met at temple and people tended to bite their tongues when they were busy with all that religious stuff. Out in the wild, he felt like he needed earplugs to deal with her.

"You remind me of my best friend's brother," Rachel said and delicately ate a single french fry off Puck's plate.

Puck, dazed, tried to catch up. He had no idea who her best friend was, and so he had no idea who that brother was. "Okay," he said, then protected the rest of his fries.

"Kurt and I go to the same vocal teacher. We've had recitals together since we were five." Rachel smiled. "He thought he could steal the lead in her custom Nativity medley away from me."

Puck eyed her. "You're Jewish."

"And he's an atheist." When Puck stared blankly back, Rachel said like it explained everything, "It was the _lead._ " She dipped her roll into her soup, took a bite, and swallowed, but somehow it seemed like she hadn't paused at all. "Anyway, I'm sure you met him last week at my bat mitzvah."

"I met a lot of people there," Puck said. "You practically needed to rent out Yankee Stadium."

She gestured with her half-eaten roll. "We'll all be in the same high school, and you and Finn would get along well. I should introduce you!"

"Sure, whatever," Puck said and started thinking about boobs.

Finn Hutton turned out to be a pretty cool guy: laid-back, funny, kinda dumb. Puck had the feeling that his brother was funny, too, but it was that weird New Yorker, Frasier-y humor that he didn't really get. He could see how the two might have looked almost identical when they were young, but by twelve years old Finn had hit a growth spurt and never looked back.

Rachel was super, scarily intense with her first relationship and Puck began to get nervous about whether she'd flip out when he dumped her. Kurt and Finn were pressure release valves: when all four of them hung out, she could talk about Broadway with Kurt while Puck talked sports with Finn. Even so, after a month, the annoyance of dating Rachel outweighed the fear that she'd go total stalker on him. "That's fine," Rachel said, to his bewildered surprise. "You were an excellent first boyfriend, Noah. A perfect foundation, and I've learned some things. Thank you."

"Uh, welcome," he said, and felt a little like he'd been used. But it could have been way worse.

Rachel still wanted to be friends and she was actually a pretty cool one to have. That little distance between "dating" and "friends" made all the clingy difference in the world. Puck still wanted to see Finn, too, and their foursome stayed together even though he didn't need to use Kurt to distract his girlfriend. It was comfortable.

One day when Rachel and Kurt were talking about the Tonys, or maybe someone named Tony, Puck leaned over and asked, "So you're gay, right?"

Kurt froze. Finn looked flatly at Puck. "Dude, you can't just ask him that." A beat, then, "Yeah, but you can't just _ask._ "

"Finn!" Rachel said and glared at him. She turned to Kurt and said brightly, "Don't worry, we won't tell anyone. I had a feeling when you kept asking about my dads, but unlike _some people_ I know you're not allowed to just demand an answer." She shot Puck another dirty look. Geez, it wasn't like he had a problem with it; he was pretty sure the two old Chinese dudes in the apartment above his were queer. He'd just wanted to be sure.

After a few seconds more, in which he seemed to convince himself that everything wouldn't suddenly fall apart, Kurt smiled nervously at them. "You won't tell, right?"

"Of _course_ we won't," Rachel said instantly.

Puck saw they'd turned to him and added, "Yeah, don't worry." He'd just wanted to know. What was the big deal?

Later, Finn stopped him in the hallway as they left Rachel's. "Look," he said seriously. "Kurt is really scared about our parents finding out, so you can't tell anyone. Okay? This could hurt him. Bad."

"I won't," Puck said. "Why won't anyone trust me on this?"

"You make fun of people," Finn said after a beat, like he was giving Puck the chance to answer for himself. "When someone says something wrong, you laugh at them. You can be a jerk."

"So can you," Puck said defensively. "Fine, but I don't do that about _big_ stuff."

"Well... I just wanted to make sure you knew that this was big."

"Got it," Puck said, and he did. There was something in Finn's voice that communicated two things very sincerely: if Puck used this as a weapon against Kurt then Finn would get serious revenge, and it would hurt Kurt more than Puck had ever tried to hurt someone. Neither was appealing, and Puck kept that knowledge under lock and key.

Two years went by. Rachel was still best friends with Kurt, and Puck with Finn. The brothers were the closest, naturally, while Puck and Kurt were the most distant of their little foursome. It wasn't that Puck disliked him; Kurt was brave and stubborn, talented and abrasive, driven and emotional. All of those things could have made him annoying, but he had a big enough heart that he was a good person with some bad points rather than the other way around. They simply found it harder to talk, and unlike any other combination of the four, usually fell into polite silence.

Finn kept growing. Fat and muscle had yet to catch up to his bones, so he looked like a stick figure next to the three of them. One day he didn't seem quite so gaunt, and then a month later he looked two years older. Puck didn't shoot up with the same ridiculous speed. Without the growing pains that had plagued Finn, he was able to work out constantly. At fourteen years old, he felt like he should be giving lessons to the men on the sidewalk about how to strut and to catch girls.

Kurt kept waiting to grow toward the sky like Finn had, but it never happened. He kept waiting for the baby fat to melt away from his cheeks, but that never happened, either. He avoided all the junk food they scarfed down and balanced his diet with protein and vitamins like some Olympic athlete, but he still stayed short, his cheeks stayed round, and his voice stayed high. 

At first Puck teased him about it, but then it really seemed to bother Kurt. More than it should. He stopped.

Puck knew their parents all worked for the government, but it had never played a huge role in their friendships. At most they'd been mildly encouraged to befriend each other, as their parents liked being able to chat about their kids at the office. But all of a sudden the four of them were shipped off to a tiny government school with high-priced tutors, and their parents' jobs became a real factor in their lives. Thanks to that new top-secret assignment, it was just the four of them in a class with seven strangers. The new kids were nice, generally, but by that point every last one found it hard to believe that Finn and Kurt were twin brothers.

He and Kurt still didn't talk that easily, but they were more familiar territory than strangers from other neighborhoods and boroughs. They began to spend more time together than they had during their public schooling, and that was when Puck noticed the shadow hiding in Kurt's eyes whenever Finn mentioned their dad. 

Finn loved the guy; they went to a game almost every weekend. Kurt spent nearly as much time with his mom and Puck figured it was what he wanted. After all, if Kurt put on a dress and a little makeup one day, he'd fool a lot of people. Seriously, it was easy to mistake him for a chick. He wasn't trying to be a dick or anything, and he knew Kurt hated when he got called a girl, but Puck just figured it was easier for him to be around women. They probably judged him less, and he made Finn look more butch with every day that passed.

After one too many sad looks, Puck started wondering if that isolation from their dad was by choice.

And after a flinch at a seemingly harmless comment from Finn about 'the guys,' Puck began to worry deep in his gut.

His own dad had left before things got too bad, thankfully, but he'd been really young. He couldn't have done anything if the man had lost his temper. Kurt was bigger than he'd been, but he still wasn't _big_. "Hey," Puck said as he sat next to Kurt during lunch. "Can I ask you something?"

"Besides that?" Kurt replied with a faint grin. His clothes were especially ridiculous that day; he tried to copy the expensive stuff in magazines and while he matched it well, some of it was just plain weird to begin with. As always, clothing covered almost every square inch of skin. Puck usually figured that coverage was due to Kurt being self-conscious when he compared his body to Finn's, but... but maybe not. Maybe he was hiding something else.

In retrospect, Puck realized that the louder Kurt's clothes were, the less attention anyone paid to what might be lurking behind his eyes. There was no way that wasn't on purpose. If Kurt hadn't flinched and if Puck hadn't remembered doing the same, he probably wouldn't have noticed the pain pulling his expression very slightly tight. 

Puck looked at him seriously. "Okay, I'm just gonna come out with this. I won't tell anyone. And you know when I say that, I mean it." He never had told anyone that Kurt was gay, even if they assumed it as soon as they saw him. Kurt knew that, and so with a wary look he nodded. "You don't have to tell me, but I just thought you might want to have someone to say 'yes' to, if it's true." Puck took a deep breath and checked to make sure no one was listening. "Does your dad hit you?"

Kurt made a strangled noise like he'd nearly choked on his tongue. "What? _No._ What the hell, Puck?"

There was no need to be that enthusiastic with a denial if Kurt was covering for him, and it sounded like the truth. Plus, even if he was lying, it was the sort of thing that a person needed to come out with on their own time. Puck accepted it and nodded. "Okay. Is your dad mean to you?"

"What?" Kurt repeated, and was silent for a while before he said, "No."

Their eyes met. Puck had been vaguely sure that they were green, but now they looked blue. Sad. "But you had to think about it, didn't you?" Puck asked.

That time, Kurt didn't have an answer.

* * *

"Do you think he's okay?" Finn asked Rachel.

She turned when he reached for her. "I don't know." He made another move for her hand. That time, Rachel jerked away. "I don't know, Finn!"

"Why are you yelling at me?" Finn asked, hurt. "I'm worried about him. More than you are."

"Well, you're the one who did this," Rachel said, folding her arms tightly across her chest so he couldn't try again.

"But I didn't mean—"

"And right now," she continued, avoiding looking at him to lessen the ache in her heart, "I'm thinking very long and hard about whether I can stay in a relationship with you."

It took Finn a second to reply. He was very quiet when he did. "What?" When she didn't answer, he said with a tinge of desperation, "Come on, Rachel, I know you're friends with him, but I'm your _boyfriend!_ Yeah, I made a mistake, and I'm freaking out over whether he's okay! It just happened!"

"Did it 'just happen' when you apparently assured him that he'd never dated anyone in New York? Even though you could have seen from his memories that he had?" Rachel stared at Finn as his shoulders slumped, and he shook his head. "I didn't think so."

"Can you please hug me?" Finn asked after an awkward pause, sounding very young. "I'm scared for him. What if I did zap his brain too much? What if I really—"

"No," Rachel said in disbelief. "I don't know if I'm still going to be your girlfriend, I'm furious with you, and you can't just ask me that!" He looked so lost and confused, but for once that puppy dog look did nothing to her heart. "Not everyone can abuse their powers like you. What would Mercedes do, or Mike? Or me?" She took a deep breath. "But Tina could drive people's fear or pleasure to get what she wants from them. Kurt could watch someone undress or walk off with their things. They don't, but they could. You, apparently, can make people think however you want." She hugged herself again. "And you do. It's the worst thing anyone could do. It's what S.H.I.E.L.D. did to us, but at least they had the excuse of saving our lives as they ruined them."

"I didn't mean to do it," Finn said. "Please." Tears choked his voice. "Look, when I thought about what I saw with Kurt and Puck, I was terrified for him. I knew that Puck is _bad news_ , and Kurt would get hurt."

"So if Jesse shows up again," Rachel said, interrupting his heartfelt plea, "will you remove all my memories of him? You have a real problem with Jesse, after all. Wouldn't it be so much easier if I just didn't know who he was? Easier for _you?_ "

"God, it's not like...." Finn's hands started shaking. She didn't know whether he was more scared for Kurt or his relationship. If he were smart, he'd be most terrified over what he was apparently capable of doing. Of course, Rachel added bitterly to herself, Finn had never been smart. Maybe he'd heard that thought; she didn't mind if he had. "I would never do that to you," Finn said after a heavy breath. 

"How can I believe you if you would do this to your brother? The one family member you have left by birth in the entire world?"

Frustrated, Finn took a few seconds to answer. She could see an answer come to mind and he seized on it instantly, without taking any time to decide whether it was the right thing to say. "He _is_ my brother," Finn said, nodding, "and so his brain is the easiest for me to read and mess with. You know that I wouldn't do this to you, because I'm pretty sure that I _can't!_ " He looked so hopeful at his argument that he wouldn't ever remove Rachel's free will because it was just too tricky for him to do.

Finn Hudson had never, ever been smart.

"I'm calling my dads," she said, gathering her things, "and I'm going home."

"Are you breaking up with me?" Finn asked desperately.

"I'm going home," Rachel repeated. "I don't know what that means just yet. I'll tell you when I do."

"Rachel!"

"Sam's right," Rachel said before she left his room. "You really need to think about what you're doing. Because right now you're directionless and you could be incredibly dangerous if you do the wrong thing." She couldn't look at him any more. Had he lied about her own memories? She couldn't be sure. "Like this."

"Please don't go," he said just above a whisper.

"I'm going to wait in the living room for my dads to come by," Rachel said. "Stay up here, please."

The request turned out not to matter, as Burt was heading out to go look for Kurt and he gave her a ride home. Neither said a word during the drive, since they could have done little but try to reassure the other that Kurt would be fine and Finn hadn't accidentally locked away everything that made him himself. "Thank you, Mr. Hummel," she said when she was turned over to her dads' care. Hiram had suited up, while Leroy looked ready to watch her at home. "Please let me know when you hear something?"

"Will do," Burt said and then looked at Hiram. "Which way are you headed?"

"I heard from Sue. She wants you to check the Puckerman place. She and I are doing broader patrols, since we're trained."

Burt nodded, then drove off above the speed limit.

"Come on, sweetie," Leroy said and led Rachel inside. "You know," he said when he'd put a plate of warm food in front of her, "there's gossip among the circles of people who're like... this. It can be a little tricky to have a telepath close. Why, Scott Summers over on the X-Men has dealt with—"

"Not now, please," she said, and he thankfully stopped talking.

* * *

Puck kept staring at his hands. He wasn't really looking at them; his head was heavy and drooping and they were resting on his legs. They were just there.

He remembered putting those hands on someone who had every reason to believe that nothing good could happen, and proving him wrong. He remembered being trusted, being treated like he was worth something and that he was someone to rely on, instead of someone who always fucked things up. He remembered smiles, laughter, tears. He remembered being in love, in one of the very few times in his life when he'd really opened his heart instead of just his fly.

And he remembered laughing as he picked up Kurt and threw him into the trash.

He didn't know if S.H.I.E.L.D. had specifically programmed him to behave that way, if they'd just pushed his worst tendencies to the forefront, or if they'd simply removed his memories and waited to see what had happened. If it was option one, nothing was his fault. Option two, they still had to take some of the blame. Option three... he didn't know if he could forgive himself. Not after what he remembered, and after the feelings that had been stirred in his heart again. And he didn't have a clue which it might be. He could have been programmed to act out a sick and twisted play, or he could have been hurting Kurt because he thought it was genuinely fun and didn't have any real reason not to.

But no matter what the answer was, Kurt would remember all of it. He'd remember Puck as the guy who did that to him.

So, when Puck heard Burt arrive and ask if Kurt had come by, his mom said no. Puck didn't yell down to correct her. Burt didn't come up to see him, to read him the riot act about treating his son right. The door slammed and he drove off.

It wasn't surprising that Kurt had gone to see someone else.

* * *

Lima flew past Kurt's eyes, though no one saw him. He dropped off the Winnebago's ladder when it slowed for a turn at an intersection. A pickup was waiting for its light to turn green. When it accelerated toward the next block, it had an invisible passenger in its bed. He made his way over miles like that, always conscious of traffic cameras and anything else that Sue might be able to access remotely in search of the runaway teenager. He couldn't hide from them entirely, but he tried to use the truck's walls and angles to his advantages whenever possible.

Kurt hopped into another pickup when he needed to change directions. For once he was glad to live where he did, surrounded by farms and fields; tiny urban cars would have been hard to hold onto. When he got within a few blocks, he just ran under the summer sun. His sword smacked his hip and stress pounded at the base of his skull.

There was no convenient lattice against the wall to scale, nor a tree branch that arced right to the window. Kurt had to climb a tree in a neighbor's yard, scoot out to where one of its branches just barely supported his weight, and then try to land on the roof without crashing through to the attic. He rolled to lessen the chance he'd be heard, then nearly flew off the edge because of it. His fingertips latched onto the rain gutter, and after a panicked second when he was worried that it would wrench loose, Kurt pulled himself back onto the roof.

Panting, he took a minute to collect himself. He probably looked a mess and a cough lingered in his throat from all the summer dust on the road. That short break gave the occupants' attention a chance to wander from any noise he'd made, but as he took it he became aware of how hot it was on the black shingles. The Kurt Hummel who didn't have powers would have complained. After superpowers, the reveal of their histories, and the knowledge that they were marked for death, he'd reassessed his priorities.

Now that he'd stopped thinking through what was necessary to implement this 'mission,' all of the earlier pain and fear began to rush back in. He'd felt like he'd been able to choose so little in his life. He struggled against what the world did to him, but sometimes it was still futile. Sometimes people got to do what they wanted to him and everyone else looked the other way. It turned out that people even thought they were justified in altering his entire life to suit their purposes, and the worst part was that they might be right. 

_This_ wasn't right, though. There was no way this could be right. After painful rounds of pretense and abuse, Kurt had the comfort of romantic contact that was desired. Wanted. Chosen. 

He never would have chosen Noah Puckerman for a single first. But he could choose what happened from that point out.

He didn't know what had happened back in New York to create those memories, thanks to Finn's block, but he knew it had to have been forced on him somehow. Maybe he'd been too lonely and tired, and had just given in? Maybe Puck had made a bet about how he could even land a guy, and everything was a lie. Maybe... the possibilities were too awful to think about.

Unable to hold back any more, Kurt hung over the edge of the roof and looked in the window. Seeing Blaine alone in his room, he knocked on the glass. Blaine looked up and frowned, so Kurt knocked again.

"Hello?" Blaine asked when he'd walked to the window, opened it, and peered toward the grass like someone must be throwing rocks. Kurt blinked at him, as he was just a few inches away, and then remembered he'd never dropped his invisibility. When he popped back into sight, Blaine yelped and stumbled backward over his own feet. Kurt winced at the heavy thump and went invisible again when his father came in to see if everything was all right. As he hung upside down, blood rushed to his head. It felt heavy and hot, and began to pound.

"I was looking out the window," Blaine said after a few flustered seconds. "A bird flew into it. I was just startled."

"Hrm. Is it hurt? That'd be a long fall...."

"It flew off. Everything's fine." Blaine's smile grew far too wide. "I'm going to practice songs, all right?"

Rolling his eyes tolerantly at what Kurt knew was a loud setlist for the theme park show, his father nodded and closed the door behind him when he left. Blaine counted to three, and then rushed back to the window.

"Pop the screen out," Kurt said. "My head is killing me."

Staring at him, Blaine did as requested and tucked the screen neatly between the back of a chair and the wall. "What in the world are you doing?" he asked as Kurt slid through the window and felt his blood flow back toward his feet. "You could have warned me you were going to do that. My parents are going to be furious if they know you snuck in like... Kurt?" he asked when he noticed Kurt's broken expression.

"I had to get out of there," Kurt said after a long, choked pause.

"What happened?" Blaine asked cautiously, and brushed dust off Kurt's shoulder with clear surprise that his clothing was dirty. "Was it from what you started to remember?"

"I...." He couldn't find the right words. "Can you hug me?" he asked instead.

Blaine obediently pulled him tight and close. The warmth of his body mingled with the summer afternoon pouring through the open window, and it all circled around Kurt's overheated body from the trip down the roads. He wanted to pass out. "Are you okay?"

"No," Kurt said into the side of his head. "No, I'm not okay."

Hands stroked his back. "Do you want to talk about it?"

No, but he had to. He'd lied, after all, even if he hadn't meant to. He didn't want to be like Finn and lie when he knew better. 

This revelation had made the decision for him: Kurt Hummel's life was far better than Kurt Hutton's. Kurt Hummel had mocked the cocky boy humiliating him each morning, not fallen in love with him. He knew what he wanted. The sword on his hip felt like a silly toy, now. It was time to set things right in this life. "Finn lied to me when he said I hadn't dated anyone in New York," Kurt said, a little surprised that he managed to get everything out.

"Oh," Blaine said and pulled back to take in Kurt's expression. He didn't look mad, and concern was outweighed by curiosity. "And?"

"I remembered everything," Kurt said bitterly. "For about two seconds, before he wiped my memories again."

_"What?"_ Blaine asked, nearly choking on the word. 

"After what he did, I can only remember what happened, not how I felt." Kurt's shoulders sagged. "But I do remember the 'what.' Parts of it, at least."

"All right," Blaine said carefully and led Kurt to a chair. "It's all right that you had a boyfriend in New York, Kurt. You look nervous... did you think I'd be _mad_ about you dating someone before we ever met?" When Kurt didn't reply, he knelt in front of him. "You're upset about having your old life overwritten."

Kurt nodded.

"You're upset about Finn doing the same thing today."

Kurt nodded again.

"And you're upset that this old boyfriend...." Blaine frowned and worked through that. "Were you still dating when you were taken here?"

"Yes," Kurt said dully.

"You were only fifteen," Blaine said, trying to figure out just what Kurt had discovered and then lost. "So I can't imagine you were very...." He trailed off at the hollow look in Kurt's eyes, and swallowed. "Oh," he said at that silent confirmation that Kurt had become very physical with that boy, long ago. "I wouldn't have guessed that," he admitted, which had to be an understatement considering how awkward Kurt had been on the topic. "And... and I can see why that would upset you."

For an instant Kurt wished he had Finn's powers. Did Blaine think he was cheap? Was fifteen too young? Was he already pulling away now that he knew that Kurt had slept with someone else, and that they'd never officially broken up before the government swept in? That he'd been comfortable with that other boy like he hadn't yet with Blaine? "It was bad," he said when Blaine seemed to want more of an answer.

"The relationship was... cruel?" Blaine asked. His composure was a clear facade, betrayed by his eyes. Under that rigid, concerned smile, the idea of Kurt being trapped with anyone hurtful to him was breaking his heart.

"I don't know for certain," Kurt was forced to admit, "but it must have been. And I just can't believe that I lost _everything_ to someone who—"

"Kurt, Kurt, stop," Blaine said. He took Kurt's wrists in his hands, and when Kurt didn't pull back, interlaced their fingers. "If you don't remember more than a few pieces, how do you know it was bad? This already has to be traumatic. You don't need to make it even worse." His hands were warm, and they'd never thrown Kurt in a dumpster. They'd never written mocking graffiti in a bathroom, or thrown paint-filled balloons at his house, or covered Kurt in icy humiliation in a school hallway.

He'd never be able to explain everything. He just needed to say the basics and get it over with. "Because I didn't want my first time to be with Puck," Kurt said. It felt like the words vomited out.

Blaine looked at him for a long time, and stayed very still. Then he stood and moved away.

A tiny, pained noise escaped Kurt, but he didn't reach for him.

"Oh," Blaine said quietly. "I suppose that makes sense, after how you two have been acting. Right in front of me, too."

"Please," Kurt said and wiped away a tear. "I didn't know. I am _horrified_ by this, can't you tell?"

"You haven't been acting horrified around him," Blaine said. He sounded incredibly hurt, and even that inadvertent attempt to guilt Kurt made things a million times worse.

"You think I'd cheat on you," Kurt said. "You actually think I'd cheat on you."

"I don't... I didn't like seeing how he acted around you. Now I know that he was trying to make up for lost time. And you were defending the actions of your boyfriend." Blaine nodded. He sounded like he was giving a school presentation: totally detached. "Everything makes much more sense now."

"Oh my god," Kurt said, his eyes rimmed with red. "He is not my boyfriend. You are."

"You never broke up with him," Blaine pointed out. "And I'm here with no superpowers, while he would fit right into your life of being a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, tearing up cities and—"

"I think he broke up with me when he threw me into the _trash_ ," Kurt said. "God, Blaine! I just learned that I _somehow_ started dating someone who's humiliated me countless times, and I didn't get to pick how.... my first...." His breath came in gulps. "And you think I'd cheat on you." He gulped again. His voice sounded funny. "Everyone just gets to shove me around." He snorted snot back up his nose. "When do I get to pick how...." He broke entirely, then, and curled up into a tight ball in the chair. He expected to weep, but only stray tears came. His emotions instead surged with huge, gasping breaths. It took him a while to recognize that Blaine's hand was on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Blaine quietly said when Kurt looked up at him. "You've been saying he's a good friend... I suppose that's for now, not then. I didn't realize you still had problems with how he'd acted before."

"How could I have... my _first time_...." Screwing his eyes shut, Kurt hugged his knees tightly to himself. He remembered Puck very well against the backdrop of their first days in Lima: that cruel sneer, that rampaging ego as he delighted in humiliating Kurt. If he could get along with the modern Puck, fine, but to have gotten close to that awful person who'd existed before New Directions? To have given him _everything?_

He eventually opened his eyes again, wiped away the droplets clinging to his lashes, and then the wetness at his nose. Blaine was looking at him with concern, with those warm eyes and worried brows, with the face that had only ever hurt him by accident. Kurt abruptly reared up out of the chair and flung his arms around Blaine's shoulders, kissing him deeply. "I pick you," he said, then slid one hand under the bottom of Blaine's shirt to rest possessively on his stomach. "I pick you," he said and relaxed into him like Blaine could do anything to him and he wouldn't protest. "I—"

"Kurt," Blaine said as he gently tried to remove Kurt's hand from his skin.

"I know I haven't gone as far as you've wanted," Kurt said against the curves of his ear. If he'd given himself to _Puck_ , then wouldn't it be better to catch up with someone he actually cared about? The sheer, utter wrongness of that knowledge overrode everything else in Kurt's mind. Maybe Finn had set him to autopilot, too. "What do you want to do now? We can." 

"Nothing," Blaine said, and tried to reach for Kurt's hands as they roamed Blaine's body.

"I promise, he doesn't mean anything to me," Kurt said. "If that's why you don't want to do anything now, then he doesn't matter. Whatever you've dreamed about, we can do it."

"Kurt!" Blaine snapped. The tone jolted Kurt enough that he stopped moving. "My parents are downstairs."

But if he didn't, he'd lose him. Blaine thought he was capable of cheating, after all. "But—"

"Stop," Blaine said and caught Kurt's face in his hands. "Stop. You said you picked me. All right. I believe you."

"You do?" Kurt asked hopefully. Finn's powers seemed tempting again, even after what Finn had done. He'd give anything to know that Blaine wasn't just placating him.

"I don't want you to think you have to prove anything. Not like this. Not when it's about someone else." He tried to fix the mess that was Kurt's hair, and sighed. "And I want you to stop looking so heartbroken. I can't believe I'm saying this, but... well, I don't know the specifics, but I get the feeling that Finn hurt you earlier? Not about the memory block today, but at school? When you first moved here?" 

Kurt nodded. "He was best friends with Puck, after all," he muttered.

"Do you think your _brother_ would have done that to you on his own? I'm guessing he was influenced at least a little by whatever gave you these new lives." Blaine managed a weak smile. "Selfishly, I don't want you to forgive Puck too much. But I also don't want you so heartbroken over him being, well...."

Over him being Kurt's first everything, just as Kurt had assured Blaine he wasn't. The irony was so sharp that he could stab someone right through the heart with it.

Seeing his words getting through, Blaine nodded and wiped away sticky, half-dried tear tracks. "I'm sure it was good. I'm sure you didn't regret it. You've moved on, but it wasn't because it was so awful. I don't want you thinking that your first everything was ruined forever." He waited until Kurt looked a little more settled, and then asked, "So you've calmed down?"

"I've calmed down," Kurt said. "And I know that I am _choosing_ program applications and auditions, not S.H.I.E.L.D."

That was the look he'd expected to see when he'd thrown himself at Blaine: love and acceptance. "That is very good to hear," Blaine said and kissed him. "I love you." If he still sounded unsettled over what Kurt had told him about Puck, at least it fell behind other emotions in importance. They could work through this.

"I love you, too," Kurt said as he heard a car pull in front of the house. Its engine died, but it wasn't until he heard a familiar voice at the front door that he swore colorfully and nearly punched the nearby chair. "I'm not here," he said and went invisible. "Straighten your shirt."

"Blaine!" Kurt heard his father shout up the stairs. "The woman from the government is here again. She needs to talk to you."

"Um, send her up?" Blaine said uncertainly. He looked at where Kurt was standing for guidance, but Kurt didn't trust himself to try to drop his illusions just for Blaine, and so remained an empty space in the room. "Ms. Sylvester," Blaine said politely when Sue reached his doorway. "What a surprise."

"Is it really?" Sue asked with a thin smile.

From over her shoulder, Mr. Anderson said, "You know, Blaine, Kurt has caused quite a ruckus with everything. You should talk to him about that."

Sue looked sharply at Blaine, a serpentine smile on her face, and Kurt swallowed. She knew perfectly well that they'd talked. Recently. Her searching gaze landed behind where Kurt silently stood, and he turned to look at what had caught her attention: the edge of the window screen, just barely poking out from behind the chair. "There's been a disturbance with the hostiles I mentioned to you earlier," Sue said. She was able to be more polite to civilians, thankfully. "I just need to record your son's room for analysis." Then she held up a video camera and looked less like a predator when she smiled again.

"All right," said Mr. Anderson, with one pointed look for his son. Kurt felt that sinking sensation again; even if Blaine still wanted him, he'd just taken about a hundred steps back with his parents. 

Sue began to raise the camera and Kurt gave up. He didn't trust himself to get safely out the window, and he certainly didn't think he could outrun her in her car if he did somehow make it to the ground. He tiptoed across the carpet and whispered right into her ear, "Don't say anything to his dad, I'll be in your front seat."

Sue glanced at where Kurt stood, but didn't nod. She made a show of recording Blaine's room and then said, "Done. Thank you for your cooperation. I'll be in touch again if needed. I hope it won't be." She set off walking down the hall without any further farewell to the family, and Kurt hurried after her.

He didn't drop his invisibility until he was in the front seat, strapped in and glowering at the windshield. "Guess you found me."

"That was spectacularly stupid," she said as the car set into motion. "I know most teen hormones rage like Niagara, but I figured you'd be safe for not getting tempted toward your boyfriend's bed. They put eunuchs in charge of harems for a reason, you know." When he glared at her, she raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Someone's in a mood if I can't even make a single castration joke. Well, get out your tantrum now, Porcelain. I'm about to make your life a living hell for violating orders."

"I don't have to follow your orders," Kurt snapped. "I know you're working to keep us safe, but I'm not in S.H.I.E.L.D. and I'm never going to be."

"Really," she said after a moment of hesitation.

"Really. That's a life for someone who'd be happy that they used to be with _Puck_ , and that's not me," Kurt said thinly. "I'm Kurt Hummel, not Kurt Hutton, and Kurt Hummel already knew what his life was going to be."

"I should get additional combat pay for dealing with teen melodrama," Sue muttered. "Yes, you used to be together with Puckerman. Deal with it. Quinn woke up here in Lima and was dating Paul Bunyan. Things change." He kept glaring at her and she glared right back. "Look, I have files explaining why they changed everything that they did, but I haven't even opened them. I don't question orders, I just fulfill my assignment. And right now my assignment is to get you back into your house and leave you so traumatized that you'll call Boo Radley a social butterfly."

"Fine."

"I got soft after a year of this," Sue said as they pulled to a stop at an intersection. "I'd been ordered to break up the club so you all would stop interacting as a group, but then the other judges started insulting you at Regionals. I figured that if you'd already been spending time together, it'd just be maintaining a status quo that worked. I felt sorry for you, I stuck up for the club. Even voted you kids as first place. When you still lost, I talked to Figgins. I can terrify the man. He let your club stay alive."

Kurt looked at her sidelong. He still felt like he should be glaring.

"The end result of that move," Sue said as they accelerated down the road, "was getting my ass handed to me the next time I submitted a report. I was told to never get distracted from my goal of breaking up that club and keeping you kids apart. So that's what I did: followed orders. Because I knew they had the big picture in mind, and I'd been distracted by something that didn't matter."

"Well," Kurt said, "I've learned the same thing. Your offer doesn't matter. I already had a big picture in mind and I'm not going to be distracted from it. Where are we going?" he asked as they turned the wrong way.

"We're going to Castle Point," Sue said, naming a subdivision that had been started and then abandoned when the real estate market collapsed. It was full of empty lots and half-finished houses that had lost the loans backing them.

"You can't torture me into agreeing with you," Kurt said. He was starting to get rather nervous, as he'd realized that Sue Sylvester was deliberately taking him somewhere isolated after he'd just angered her and thrown her trust and gifts back in her face.

"That's not the problem," Sue said with a glance at the rearview mirror. "We're being followed and I need to handle this away from civilians."

"What?" Kurt asked, turning around. Nothing was there, whether on the road or in the air. He even opened his window for a better view, and managed to look out of the car before Sue barked to pull his head inside, but there was nothing outside but humidity and the scent of fresh tar and distant dairies. Frowning, he followed her lead when she glanced at the rearview mirror again. A yelp escaped him. Some shifting mass of shadows was flying after the car, but it was invisible again when he turned back around for a closer look. What _was_ that thing?

"They stick to the ground, usually," Sue said as they turned past a graffiti-covered concrete sign for Castle Point. "They must be worried they'll lose us, so they're putting energy into flying. They'll be easy marks when we face them."

"What are they?" Kurt asked, then recalled what she'd said. "Wait, we?" he asked, going very pale.

"You've got one of your swords, at least. You basically know how to use it. I just need you to cover me in case something slips past my bullets." 

"But—"

"Those swords are special issue to top agents, they can cut through pretty much anything. Just don't pull your strikes and you'll be fine," Sue said and turned down a road with an empty cul-de-sac at the end.

Kurt's pulse pounded. He desperately wanted to be playing Trivial Pursuit again: bored out of his mind, never faced with the question of the spotlight versus S.H.I.E.L.D., not knowing that Blaine hadn't been his first boyfriend, and without unknown shadow creatures coming for his head on a dead-end street. "But—"

"Unbuckle your seatbelt and hold on, you'll throw the door open as soon as we've come to a stop. Back me up. They'll become visible when they move into this dimension enough to attack us."

_This is real,_ Kurt thought vacantly as he unbuckled. He was on autopilot again. He needed to fight to stay alive, and even if he'd had one of his worst days ever, he wanted to reach a better future. _So I need to fight._ His gut lurched as Sue screeched around the cul-de-sac, braking hard, and his pulse pounded behind his eyes. But when she came to a stop facing the way they'd came, Kurt instantly shoved open his door and leapt out, sword in hand.

Sue raised her gun and waited. A half-dozen heartbeats felt like an eternity, and Kurt felt sweat bead under the brilliant sun. When the first shadow leapt at them out of a bright afternoon sky, silent and more terrifying for it, she put a bullet of light through its forehead. She took out one more and then the casing fell noisily to the ground. "Huge caliber," she explained as she shoved another one in. "They don't hold much."

That was enough time for a third to get through, and Kurt shrieked as he saw shifting, ethereal claws lunge at him. It was the Dementors and Ringwraiths and every movie monster rolled into one, except it was _there_. Focused on nothing more than not letting it touch him, he spun with sword raised. His arms arced in a flash of silver. The metal resisted, just for a second, and then slid through what might be flesh and bone. Inertia carried the attacker forward and the dead body smacked heavily and wetly into Kurt. It bled darkness all over his chest as he picked himself up off the rough asphalt.

Two more shots from Sue took out two more of them, and she squinted distrustfully at the sky. "I counted five in my scanner," she said with a nod toward her rearview mirror, "but they were clumped. I could have missed one."

Kurt didn't reply. It was all he could do to stare at the shadowy corpse bleeding all over his chest without screaming or passing out.

Sue shoved in a fresh magazine and glared at Kurt when he stayed silent. "Do you normally let unknown hostiles from another dimension bleed potential biohazards everywhere, or did the memory of Puckerman sticking it to you give you a deathwish?"

That was _it._ Kurt ripped off his shirt, then the one under it when he saw it was also stained, and used the clump of fabric to wipe his unbroken skin. "What the hell just happened?" he demanded, only then realizing he'd stalked up to Sue Sylvester and was threatening her with his sword. He debated lowering it, but instead threw his ruined clothes to the ground and used that additional hand to steady his weapon. "Tell me!" He was about to snap. He had a sword. And it had been a _bad day._

"Can't you tell?" Sue asked, holstering her gun. She looked entirely unintimidated by the sword near her throat. "They found you."


	20. The End of the Titans

The front door of the Berry house slammed open. Rachel looked up, startled. Sue was there, looking annoyed even for her, and Kurt stood behind her with a camouflage jacket clutched around his shoulders. "Berry," Sue shouted.

"I'm right here," Rachel said uncertainly and tried to see whether Kurt looked all right. His expression was somewhat vacant, but at least he seemed aware of what was around him. Maybe that meant that Finn hadn't hurt him too badly?

"Not you," Sue sneered at her. "Useful Berry!"

Leroy hurried downstairs and shot the woman a dark look. "Don't insult my daughter, Sue. Good, you found Kurt. Did you tell his parents?"

"Not yet, but all the families are being informed." She let out a long breath and added, "They're here."

"Shit," Leroy said. He seldom if ever swore, and that put fear deep into Rachel's gut. "Are you telling them to come over here?"

"Either yours or Napier's, and I'd feel better with two agents."

"Hudson. Well, Hudson-Hummel."

"That's a mouthful."

As they argued back and forth, never taking the time to soothe Rachel's nerves with an explanation, she gestured Kurt to come close. It was only then that he acknowledged Rachel at all. Though he looked exhausted beyond measure, Kurt still seemed like himself instead of some Finn-wiped zombie. Adjusting the coat around his shoulders revealed a sliver of pale skin when the front halves moved; he'd lost his shirt along with his energy. What on earth had happened?

"I want to take a shower," Kurt said. His knuckles were white on the jacket. "I want to go home."

Sue's look held no sympathy. She gestured Leroy away to start calling people. "You'd still be at home if you hadn't pulled this little stunt."

"I want to go home," Kurt repeated. Sue said nothing, and so he went back to, "I want to take a shower."

That insistent repetition was worrisome; maybe Finn had zapped his mind, after all. Rachel said, "Kurt, you can use mine or the one in the basement. Both have shampoo and conditioner, and you can get a washcloth from the—"

"Yours," he said shortly. "I don't want the room Puck _tested_ himself in."

"Oh," Rachel said, smiling weakly. She'd been so numb over Finn that she'd barely considered the revelation about Puck and Kurt. "Right. And, um... where's your shirt?"

"I had to use it to wipe off the blood. Don't worry. I'm fine."

Sue smirked at Rachel's startled look. "Getting a feeling for how serious this is, finally? William always argues that the arts help with critical thinking, but you all work your very hardest to prove him wrong." Her shoulders squared. "Yeah. Those things I warned you about are here. We don't know exactly what they want to do with you, but the important thing is to not come close enough to find out. Everyone will bunk here, with two trained agents, while the _best_ agent clears out the town." She turned and shouted to Leroy, "Don't let Porcelain shower for more than five minutes. He needs to be under constant surveillance after that escape attempt."

"I am taking a long, hot shower," Kurt instantly said in challenge. Rachel didn't know if she'd ever heard a student dare to speak with so much open anger toward Sue.

"You are doing exactly what I tell you to do. You'd think you'd realize that following my orders saved your life in that fight."

Fight? What fight? They'd _fought_ the creepy strangers trying to find them? That's where the blood on Kurt's shirt had come from? Confusion overwhelmed Rachel and she looked helplessly between them.

"You know," Kurt said tightly, and gathered his jacket again, "you have a very high opinion of yourself for someone who's not even trusted to oversee this mission alone."

Sue glared back at him, then at Leroy when he walked into the hallway to join the conversation. "These other agents are useful idiots, nothing more." Leroy didn't react to her beyond a simple eyeroll; wise man.

"I'm not talking about them," Kurt said. "I'm talking about Matt."

"He left. I know you're so unobservant that you regularly fail to acknowledge the performance deadline for picking your songs until twenty-four hours beforehand, but I did think you would have noticed how Agent Rutherford hasn't been around for a year."

"But he has," Kurt said. "Artie's seen him watching the school. Didn't you notice how none of us were surprised when you said he was an agent?"

Sue blinked, and for once looked completely off-balance. "When was this?"

"Last week of school, but we have no idea how many times he's actually been here." Kurt's eyebrow rose. "I guess that means you weren't kept in the loop on everything?"

It took her a few seconds to reply. "Did you know about this?" Sue asked Leroy, sounding like she couldn't decide between being offended or worried.

"Of course not," he said mildly. "I'm a useful idiot who gets shoved away on missions outside of Lima, remember?" He shrugged when her eyes narrowed to slits. "Look, you got into trouble for letting the club stay together. I heard that much through the gossip chain. My guess is that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s sent Rutherford back a few times to make sure you're stepping right."

"They didn't tell me that," Sue snapped.

"Which would be the point, yes," Leroy said. "Oh, calm down, Sue. You look ready to blow an artery and we do need you on the front lines."

She was indeed turning rather red, but then her jaw set and she nodded slowly. "You're right. I need to focus my attention on the mission at hand. And that includes identifying possible risks, like Agent Rutherford."

"What?" Kurt asked in molasses-slow disbelief. Rachel felt much the same. Was Sue incapable of believing that her bosses were checking up on her? That Matt's appearance had to be explained away as something else, as something dangerous, as something not about her?

Sue eyed him sidelong. "Wipe that look off your face, Tin Man." Kurt seemed to get the reference and looked instantly annoyed, while it took Rachel a beat to decipher that the character was a friend of Dorothy. (Kurt was much better at understanding Sue than she was, a fact she didn't envy.) "Please. Fury hasn't been so petty with me since right after we broke up," Sue said with a snort. The others grimaced. "Don't act so shocked, it was just meaningless animal sex."

"Sue," Leroy said. "Focus. And... stop, please."

"Rutherford came back after a _year_ away?" Sue asked herself. "If Fury had used him to check up on... no. No, it wouldn't go on that long. Not with you to talk to, too." Her attention snapped back on Leroy. "Have they ever asked you about the program?"

"A few times," he said with a shrug. "Why?"

"If they have two active agents verifying my reports, they wouldn't need a third. And for all we know, they've asked Carole, too." Sue twitched. "Dammit. Dammit! I trusted him."

"What's wrong with Matt?" Rachel asked, but Sue ignored her.

"They shouldn't come here," Sue said, looking around the foyer with quick, wary glances. "Go tell your husband to call everyone again. Cell phones, in case they've already left. Direct them to Carole's, instead." Her short, direct words, free of insults and nicknames, pooled coldly in Rachel's gut. Sue Sylvester never sounded like that. 

"Why?" Leroy asked. "Look, she's good at what she does, but she doesn't have much offensive training and her husband's a civilian. And she's out of practice, besides."

"It's not about the people," Sue muttered and turned a slow, searching circle. "It's about the house. That one's new and unlisted."

"We're unlisted," Leroy said in confusion. "All the kids' families are."

"But people have been here. They know where it is, and where everyone else lives. The Hudson-Hummel house is still unknown. The time she needs to find it is time we can use to track the invasion paths."

"She?" Leroy repeated. "Sue, you need to stop speaking in riddles."

"Fine. Maybe Agent Rutherford really is checking up on me. Or maybe one single bad report wasn't enough to demand constant surveillance for an agent at my clearance level." Sue's lips pursed. "I find that a hell of a lot more likely. Besides, they wouldn't bring in extra agents when they've asked you two for updates." Raised eyebrows dared Leroy to disagree. He didn't, and instead rested his fingertips against his lips in thought.

"But then why would Matt be here, then?" Kurt asked. His gaze was sharp. The puzzle before them had pulled him past his fear, exhaustion, and anger.

"Because he volunteered to check on the status of his previous assignment," Sue guessed, though it sounded more like fact. "He's covering his tracks. Looking like the model agent, going above and beyond the call of duty. I've seen this happen before. Never trust an agent who offers to do busy work. The good ones want to make a real difference and the lazy ones just follow orders."

"And why would he do that?" Leroy asked, but he seemed more willing to hear her out. 

"How many agents do you know who have been bribed?" Sue asked.

"Too many," Leroy instantly said, although Rachel thought that he'd say that about even a single traitor. "Sue, this is turning into a Tom Clancy novel. You're making a lot of assumptions here."

"Am I? One of the kids' parents left the program after just a couple of months. Who'd _want_ to be in Lima? This entire town smells like toenails." Sue paced the hallway. "A junior agent was ordered to move here, get himself physically altered, and relive the horrors of high school for a year straight. And for all he knew on first assignment, it could be longer." Her jaw clenched. "A perfect bribery target. He had to think he was one step above Bob Cratchit if that was the sort of assignment he landed."

Rachel shared a worried look with Kurt. Had Matt really been bribed to spy on them? At what point had his loyalties changed? True, Sue was making assumptions, but Rachel doubted that top agents became _top_ agents without good intuition. Nearly everything she'd said made terrifying sense, except for one nagging point. "But Ms. Sylvester, Matt was here a month ago. Maybe he's been here again, unseen, I don't know. But if he was already spying on us, why did those things—"

"Rifts," Leroy added. "It's what they make, it's who they are."

"Rifts," she continued, nodding, "only find us after we were being discussed on television? When we were being promoted worldwide?"

It was a good question, and all three of them turned to Sue expectantly. "It's not about Rutherford spying on you," Sue said tightly. "That's not what I'm really worried about. If you're attacked by more Rifts because you've been revealed, fine; we'll fight them off." Her frown deepened. "I need to go make some calls."

"I... Sue, you need to focus again," Leroy said. He rubbed his face. "You're not making sense."

"I know something you don't," Sue said. Genuine worry crept into her voice, her eyes. "I'm not concerned that Rutherford spied on them. There was nothing to see while he was here, and you're right, it's gotten out through other channels. I'm concerned about what else this means he did when he was assigned to Ohio. His work didn't stop at the end of the school day." 

"What else did he do?" Kurt asked warily.

Her brow furrowed like a plowed field. "The last thing he did before his transfer was vet Shelby Corcoran as a suitable adoptive parent for Beth," Sue said. "Get them to Kurt's house, Leroy." She closed the door as she left.

Rachel stared after her. Everything moved in slow motion, and her limbs felt very heavy.

She'd seen Shelby's face on Jacob's web page. Rachel's thoughts, consumed with her own rise toward fame, had slipped right past the question that video posed: was Shelby her real birth mother? Had she been a surrogate to two men in New York City? And if so, how did she play into all of this? If _not_ , why did they think Shelby fit into Rachel's Ohio life? "Daddy?" she asked Leroy uncertainly. "Was she my birth mother?"

"She couldn't have been," Leroy said after a second of thought. "They wouldn't have left such a close connection open. She...." He closed his eyes and concentrated. "No, no. I can see the memories I got from your first dads, Rachel. When they saw you in the hospital."

"And that surrogate wasn't Shelby?" Kurt asked. "You're sure?"

"She was in her mid thirties when Rachel was born, and had been their downstairs neighbor for years." Leroy swallowed. "Her eyes were green. No contacts. I can't remember her name, but that woman was not Shelby Corcoran."

"Then why did you think Shelby was my surrogate when I told you what happened with her last year?" Rachel asked. Her face felt tomato-red. "Why didn't you question it?"

"Why didn't _you_ wonder before now?" Kurt pointed out. Only one hand clutched his coat closed; the other was on his sword. "Why didn't anyone think about her? It's kind of an obvious thing to ask, Rachel!"

"Well, you could have realized something was wrong!" Rachel said defensively, though she felt as if she'd let everyone down by not picking up on the issue herself. She was far closer to the question. She'd seen Shelby's interview. She'd thought about Shelby when she wondered why her fathers were never home. Every last time, her mind had slipped right past the obvious question of Shelby Corcoran's existence.

"Come on, kids." All of them turned to see Hiram in the doorway, where he held car keys. "I just finished calling everyone. Let's get over to your house, Kurt. I'm sure Sue will get everything under control."

"Who is Shelby Corcoran?" Leroy asked his husband.

Hiram blinked. "You mean besides Rachel's surrogate?" When they stared back at him, Hiram looked confused until his expression abruptly dropped. "So if that's impossible, why did we think she was?" he asked, but no one had an answer. "Let's go," he said intently. "I'll message the police and tell them not to pull us over. We're going to speed."

* * *

"This is pretty much the most shameless thing you've ever done," Tina said, grinning.

Mike grinned back from across her room, where he was practicing his flying control. They'd landed on a method of him going into a handstand and very slowly putting his weight back onto his arms. If he stopped flying too quickly, his unprepared arms would collapse under him. Being smacked on the head a few times had been an excellent motivating factor, and now she could see his arms slowly and deliberately flex as they began to bear his weight.

On Tina's suggestion, he was training shirtless.

They both very sincerely agreed that a shirt during flight training would only cause wind resistance. That he was barely moving during the training didn't enter into the discussion. Tina didn't mind at all.

After three successful rounds of that, Tina decided reluctantly that it was time to move on. She could use training, too, and she did owe him some repayment for that show. "Fair warning, I can't take much," Tina said as she put her hand on her table lamp and watched the illumination flicker. She could feel energy trickling into her, but forced herself not to accept the torrent she wanted. "My parents complained about the power bill last month when they realized what had happened."

Mike promptly rotated until he was standing again. "Be careful." Even with the warning, he looked excited.

They'd come to agree with others' assessment: despite affecting people's brains, Tina wasn't psychic in the picky superhero definition of the term. She used the energy she stockpiled to prompt primal sensations deep within minds with pure biological reactions. She couldn't elegantly convince people they were seeing a live-action Simba or read someone's thoughts, but she could wallop someone with a big, heaping helping of fear. Or anger, or disgust, or pure unfiltered pain.

She could also stimulate pleasure and happiness. That was what she and Mike tried for, but Tina had needed a while to perfect her attempts. The slight dent in her ceiling from the top of his head, when she'd accidentally filled him full of some godawful rage-pain-fear combination, had put them off experimenting for at least a week.

By that point, though, she was very good at aiming. "Come here," she said, grinning, and wiggled her fingertips at him. Itching to release the energy stockpiled within her, a few sparks flew from her hand. As soon as Mike sat on the bed, Tina laid her hand on his bare shoulder, stared into his eyes, and whispered, "Don't move." 

Contact wasn't needed, but her boyfriend wasn't wearing a shirt and Tina wasn't stupid. Mike smiled in anticipation but stayed otherwise still.

She released the energy within her directly into the pleasure center of Mike's brain. His back arched, his mouth opened, his eyes closed. Tina forced herself to focus. She couldn't let her attention slip, no matter how beautiful a sight he made. He wouldn't make a beautiful sight if she hit the wrong spot again and he—

"Tina!"

She jerked her hand away in time and no energy zapped where it shouldn't. Tina turned to her opening door, blushing darkly.

Mike sheepishly grabbed his shirt and held it in front of his chest. "Hi, Ms. Cohen-Chang."

Tina's mother dragged her eyes across Mike's half-bare body, then ignored him. He clutched the shirt a little more closely. "Tina, I told you to stop sucking energy. We're already running the air conditioner so much as the weather heats up, we can't afford to keep paying for you to play around with your superpowers."

"Sorry," she mumbled.

"You two need to get your things." Tina's mother shoved things at her, like it would help move things along. "Mike, um, put on your shirt."

He awkwardly pulled it on.

"Why?" Tina asked. It felt like something was deeply wrong. This wasn't about Mike needing to go home so Tina could help with chores.

"We're supposed to drive you over to the Hummel-Hudson... which name comes first?" She waved it off. "That doesn't matter. Mike, your parents said we can drive you. It sounds like those dangerous things are here. We're getting everyone into one location so they can watch you."

"Oh," Mike said. His hand slipped into Tina's and squeezed. "But we'll be fine, right?"

"Of course you'll be fine!" she said like it was an absurd thing to consider otherwise. "But you need to hurry, come on." 

Tina let herself be led to the garage by her father, choosing to feel nothing rather than fear, and Mike hurried after. They piled into the back seat and peered through the window when the door rolled slowly open. No zombie hordes or demons stood there, and that was a good start. "So how's it been with your mom?" Tina asked as they sped down the street, and firmly told herself that dark blur had simply been the neighbor's cat.

"She tries to be strict," Mike said; he'd missed the cat, but something about a tree had him jumpy. "But I can tell she really cares about me." Even though his voice was drumskin-tight, he managed to flash a smile. "We talked about whether I should put down superpowers on a college application or not."

Tina giggled nervously. "And your dad?"

Mike swallowed and looked down. "He, uh, mostly wants me to not cause 'any more trouble.'" His fingers sketched nervous patterns on his jeans. "I think he's mostly just looking forward to being done with this whole thing, at this point."

It was quiet in the car for a block, and then Tina's dad spoke up. "Michael, I know you get excellent grades, and you work hard. You're polite, kind, and thoughtful. Any parent should be proud to have a son like you."

Mike couldn't respond for another half block, and when he did speak his voice was unsteady. "Thank you, sir."

Tina smiled at him and tried not to think about how her mom had totally checked Mike out. That was worse than a bunch of creepy monsters.

* * *

"Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor."

"Romans," Mercedes said confidently from her comfortable position on the living room couch, but faltered when her father waited for more. "Twenty.... two?"

"Twelve ten," chuckled Walter. There was no doubting that he was her father, now. Mercedes had been locked inside that house for nearly a week, only able to have scheduled guests. Although she'd been visited by Sam (who was sweet), Kurt (who was whiny), and Quinn (who insisted on doing all her old chores), the isolation from the world was wearing on her. When she'd realized she wouldn't be able to go to church that morning, it had been the last straw. She was ready to break down and cry over her stupid, messed-up life.

That was when Deanna, her mother, suggested holding their own family Bible study session. Although Mercedes missed her choir and seeing the pastor, reading the book itself was a balm to her strained nerves. Having her parents and little brothers around her was soothing in a way she'd desperately needed.

So, fine, she'd messed up on the specific identification. She still liked hearing the sentiment. "I got the 'T's right for the verse numbers," Mercedes said, and everyone laughed. "But the second part seems a little weird to me, you know?"

Deanna tilted her head. "How so?"

"It sounds like you're supposed to show off. That seems like pride." And while she didn't think it was wrong to show _any_ pride, she knew really being driven by it was one of the big no-nos.

"Do you want to show off your powers?" asked one of her younger brothers. "Do you want to be a hero?"

"They're cool," said the other. "I liked it when you made the bubble, and blew those guys up."

"I didn't blow anyone up," Mercedes laughed, then sobered. "I don't know. I like the idea of doing something that helps people, and I like what I remember about living in the city. Even the tiny apartments just made me feel like I should go out and see everything." She fingered a loose thread on her jeans. "But it would have been so easy for someone to get really hurt in Columbus."

"Including you," Deanna agreed.

"Worse than hurt," Walter added.

"Yeah. And when there are so many other ways to do good, like charity or being a Big Sister or something?" Mercedes shrugged. "I don't think I want to set myself up to die just because it's the flashiest way I could use my powers. I can still protect someone from getting hit by a car, you know? I don't have to do it with a fancy code name."

"And that," Walter said, smiling, "sounds like you're figuring out how to outdo people with showing honor. Not pride."

"Oh," Mercedes said, and smiled as well. Deanna heard the phone ring and stood to get it, and Mercedes scooted closer to her dad. "Okay, let's do more."

Walter had just picked which bookmark to read from when Deanna returned. Her good mood had vanished. "Mercedes," she said. "We need to go."

* * *

"Santana," Judy said politely as she leaned down with a serving tray, "that's a very nice pair of earrings."

Santana took a few celery sticks and smiled awkwardly back. "Thanks."

"And Brittany, I love your hat," Judy continued as she moved to her. 

Brittany took twice as much celery and immediately ran her tongue down one stick's hollow. "Thanks," she mumbled through a gooey mouthful of peanut butter.

"Thank you for the snacks," Quinn said, and once again purposefully left off any name at the end, whether 'Mom' or 'Judy.' It felt like she should know what to call the woman responsible for her, but every day was a fresh round of feeling out their boundaries. "I really appreciate that you're trying," she added. "I do."

Judy smiled. "Well, I'm just happy to see you around friends. I'll get out of your hair. I know you don't want me hanging around." She hurried out and closed the door behind her.

"That was awkward," Brittany said before she scooped out the peanut butter from another stick, licked it off her finger, and set aside the naked celery.

"Awkward is definitely the word for it," Quinn agreed. She hugged her knees to her chest. "But she is trying. And she's actually pretty nice. She was the one who got me to go over to see Mercedes. And Artie."

Santana snorted. "Artie? Why would you want to see him?"

"Because I mentioned him once and she decided that I was missing out on a friendship in the making." Quinn smiled at the memory. She didn't dislike Artie, and they'd had their moment of connection in the gym, but it had been more one-on-one time than they were prepared for. They'd spent most of their time watching movies rather than trying to talk, but at least they were around another person. That was important. Visiting Mercedes was even better.

Then Judy asked her to please have Santana and Brittany over, but only if she wanted to. She promised to stay away if it was her fault that they didn't want to come over, since they knew how traditional she could be about some things. She went on to say that she wouldn't judge them. She liked Ellen DeGeneres very much.

Quinn, trying not to laugh, invited Santana and Brittany so Judy would stop asking. The girls had barely darkened the door of her house during her years in Lima, just like nearly everyone had stayed clear of her stilted family life. It felt better to have them there than she'd expected. "Do you guys remember being friends in New York?"

"Yeah," Santana said, smiling a little. "I mean, I obviously spent more time with Brittany because we lived closer."

"And because we were making out, and you weren't," Brittany added. She squinted. "I... think."

"I'm pretty sure I wasn't making out with you, yeah," Quinn said. She drew out a glob of peanut butter on her pinkie and licked it off. "I know I was on my own because of how I didn't live near anyone. Artie remembered being on his own, too. Well, he did live close to Mercedes, but she wanted to go see Tina, Mike, Kurt... whoever. She thought where they lived in Queens was boring." 

"Wrong," Santana said quietly.

"No, Artie was pretty sure about that," Quinn said. "You know, I think he thought Mercedes was a little cute."

"Artie thinks everyone is cute," Brittany said. "When we were dating, he kept talking about Miley Cyrus. And the mom on The Incredibles."

After eying Brittany, Santana explained herself. "I mean, you were wrong that you were on your own, Quinn. Look, I...." She ducked her head, but Quinn could still make out her cheeks darkening. "I was excited about having my first girlfriend."

Brittany smiled brilliantly at the word.

"But we both liked you. You were our friend. You're smart, and pretty, and...." Santana laughed. "Wow. For once I don't even feel jealous when I say that." Contentment did seem to radiate from her and her eyes were bright.

"I guess I'm surprised you're smiling, after everything with your parents," Quinn said.

"I've been at Brittany's this whole time," Santana said. Brittany began work on her last bit of peanut butter and Quinn had a sudden uncomfortable flash of picturing them together as she watched Brittany's tongue delve into the celery. "Her parents are one wall over, Quinn," Santana said when she noticed her look.

"Sorry," Quinn said. It would have explained her good mood.

"I remembered falling in love with her in Brooklyn," Santana said, lacing her fingers with Brittany's. Brittany stopped snacking and smiled back. "With stupid jokes over pizza when it was raining outside, and watching the fireworks on the Fourth and kissing when they took breaks."

"Stopping to listen to that guy play his violin in the subway station," Brittany added and leaned against her shoulder.

"And not _caring_ that people saw us, or that all of you other girls kept talking about boys... I just... I remembered how that felt. At first it was kind of weird, like it didn't fit inside me." Santana rested her head on Brittany's. They aligned with well-worn edges. "But I've been with her family and they don't care, either. They feel more like my family than the people I'm supposed to call Mom and Dad. It hasn't been big moments, it's just been this safe place, hour after hour. And by now I know that there are places where I can... not care again. And that's amazing."

"You guys look so happy," Quinn said and felt a surge of jealousy. She didn't want a girlfriend, of course. She didn't really want a boyfriend, either. She just wanted to feel like she fit into something in her life as well as those two fit together.

"She is," Brittany said and kissed Santana on the nose. "We flipped past a Mind of Mencia rerun and she just called him a moron." When Quinn failed to understand the significance, she added, "Instead of 'fucking moron.' She goes PG-13 again when she's happier."

"Oh."

"Plus, Brittany's mom told me something that made me feel even better," Santana said. "I bet you never accidentally iced anything over before Artie woke up your powers, right?"

"Right," Quinn said, confused. It seemed obvious to say that she hadn't used her superpowers when she didn't have them.

"Because powers like ours are really straightforward to block, apparently." Santana shrugged. "But others are tricky and slipped through. Like, her cat? He actually read her diary."

"Yeah, I told you guys that," Brittany said. "Didn't you believe me?"

"Seriously?" Quinn giggled. "What else happened?"

"You know how Artie did that spotless rip-off of the Madonna video for Sue? Bam, guy with total control over electronics. Finn _very occasionally_ knowing the exact right thing to say? Telepathy leaking through. Kurt getting handed thousands of dollars in clothes and the nicest car in the whole freaking town? Illusions." Santana grinned even more widely. "I knew it was too good to be real. He gets the super-supportive family while I get... those two, and he gets a higher credit card limit than me even with Bob the Builder for a dad? Nuh uh. Not happening." The light in her eyes dimmed. "It's still not fair, though. Ten years from now his dad will call him to talk, and mine won't even have the right number."

"Yeah," Quinn said darkly. "Tell me about it."

"The worst part is that I can remember my real parents," Santana said. "And they were so much better."

"Tell me about it," Quinn repeated. Even if they hadn't been perfect, they hadn't been Russell. And they hadn't had to _try._

"You guys can share my parents, if you want," Brittany said. "They're pretty great."

Santana looked ready to take her up on the offer, but Quinn shook her head. "Thanks, Brit. But I'm going to try to make something in my life work out, I think." Maybe having to try wasn't bad, so long as something came out of it. She was about to say as much when the door opened again. Judy hadn't knocked and that put Quinn immediately on edge. The woman had been doing a much better job of respecting her boundaries lately. "Yes?"

Judy gestured to the phone. Her voice was high and thin. "We need to get in the car."

* * *

"We're not supposed to let you have that," Artie's mom said as they drove down the road. "But honestly, I think it would be good if you could check up on the news and see if there's any danger nearby. Executive parent decision."

Artie looked at his laptop and clutched it all the harder. If they'd so easily ignored S.H.I.E.L.D.'s orders, something really big must be going on. They wouldn't tell him what, though. He knew why: his parents thought he was weak. Everyone did. He was left behind in their first trip to Columbus, and he was the only person who didn't get talked about by the news. Don't let Artie out of his van, he heard every time that happened; he'll break.

At least he'd found out that Jacob had talked about him, thanks to a Rachel-Kurt-Mercedes-Sam gossip chain. The world knew about Envision, even if he had been hidden away. (The nerds on that site liked him, apparently. They could get behind someone who sat at a computer and still deserved to be called a superhero.)

For the past few days, it had been a comfort to know that he wasn't left out of the group. He and Quinn had made small talk about being big fancy heroes, because... why not? Now, though, he had no idea what was going on and the wall of pleasant daydreams wasn't enough to shield him. "Okay, can you please tell me why we're going to Kurt and Finn's?"

"We should," his dad said after a short argument of whispers. "They'll tell them at the house."

"I suppose you're right," said his mom, and she turned to face where Artie's wheelchair was securely locked against the van wall. "Those things that Sue was worried about, well, they're here. They're gathering everyone together. Don't worry! I'm sure you'll be safe. Sue'll take care of things."

"Oh," Artie said and clutched his laptop again.

Maybe it would have better if he'd stayed behind the scenes, after all.

* * *

"What the hell were you doing?"

Once, Finn had worried that Burt Hummel would hurt him in a fit of fatherly rage: if not lashing out at him one-on-one, then lurking like some movie villain. As soon as Finn let down his guard, just for a second, Burt would take revenge for putting that look of absolute anguish on Kurt's face in the basement. It wasn't that he'd thought Burt was a bad person, but that he was a fiercely protective father and that Finn had really screwed up.

Now, Burt was the guy who'd gone to Finn's games, offered to work through football plays that weren't coming together in his head, and trusted Finn enough to give him real work to do at the garage. (Even if that had come to a screeching halt when they were on the news, just like football practice and everything else in life.) Finn wasn't too worried about what would happen when Burt came back from looking for Kurt. Things would definitely suck, but they weren't ruined.

But he might have really ruined things with Rachel.

Maybe Kurt.

Puck, too.

And although losing her was never a concern like it could have once been with Burt, he couldn't remember the last time he'd heard Carole sound so disappointed in him. Finn flinched. "I freaked out, Mom."

"You could have killed Kurt, do you realize that? Left him comatose, not even knowing his own name...." She threw up her hands. "I thought you were more responsible with your powers, Finn, but you just showed me that you have an awful lot of growing up to do."

He bowed his head under the biting sting of his mother's criticism. "I couldn't remember what went on with them, not exactly, but I knew it was _bad_. I wanted to protect him. I didn't know how, and I just... I just snapped."

"Nothing is _ever_ bad enough that you can just make a decision like that for someone," Carole said, but froze as the last words tumbled from her lips. "Or... well, you have to at least have the authority like Colonel Fury does, and...." She held up a finger when he began to protest, to say that she'd just proved his point for him. "The Ohio project was to protect you and everyone on this planet from being killed. Unless you can talk about those kind of consequences, I don't want to hear it."

"Kurt wasn't going to die," Finn admitted. "But what I remembered... Mom...."

"What?" Carole asked sharply.

"I don't know what happened, but I know that it had something to do with Puck and I've never seen Kurt look more totally destroyed... except for what I did to him. But this time, I was supposed to protect him. Not supposed to hurt him myself." Finn swallowed. It was hard, like a jelly bean was stuck in his throat. "So I freaked and did whatever I could to help. And now everyone's mad at me and I made it worse."

Carole sighed and didn't respond.

"I'm supposed to use my powers to make things better with everyone," Finn said. "Rachel had me read Blaine's mind to make sure he didn't suspect anything. I even checked with her to make sure that was okay, and she said I should. But now she's mad about this."

Carole sat next to him, stayed quiet for a second, and then rested her hand on top of his. "Rachel was wrong then, Finn, and you were wrong now. I won't deny that there'll be times when you really need to use your powers, whether or not someone's agreed to it. But you need to understand how bad what you did was, so you know how bad the other option would have to be. Protecting the world from being destroyed was bad enough to justify what they did to you kids. Protecting Kurt's feelings wasn't a big enough tradeoff to do this."

He knew that by then, but he didn't understand _why._ His face clearly said as much.

"It means you're taking away someone's free will. Just listening to thoughts can be bad enough. I won't lie, S.H.I.E.L.D. has telepaths all through the ranks. Probably more than they even know. And sometimes they spy on employees under investigation. That's still iffy, but at least they have cause, first." Carole didn't look as disappointed any more, but she still looked very serious. "But _controlling_ someone's mind is huge, Finn. I had pretty high clearance and this project is the only authorized instance I've heard of."

He stayed quiet and tried to think about everything.

"Do you remember when you came home from Columbus that first night? You said someone had drugged Kurt's drink?" Carole asked.

"Yeah."

"What would you think if someone really did that, so he'd act like they wanted him to act?" She nodded solemnly when understanding fully and finally struck Finn, and he cringed. "And about reading people's minds, well. You barely know Blaine. What if you went through all of Kurt's emails to figure out whether your brother was dating someone good or bad? It would be different if you saw bruises instead of just not liking someone, wouldn't it?"

"Why couldn't I just be fast like Mike?" Finn asked uncomfortably after being presented with the question of exactly how worried he'd have to be to deliberately violate Kurt's privacy like that, and whether it could ever be really justified. "He doesn't have to think about whether or not his powers are fine to use." 

Rachel's hypothetical question about Jesse returned, and the unhappy flip-floppy feeling in Finn's stomach intensified. Finn had occasional issues with Blaine: it still felt weird to be the sole defender of Kurt's prom outfit in that living room, and when you cared about someone, you naturally developed some low-level resentment toward whoever spent months at the other end of their unrequited crush. Still, he thought his brother was dating a good guy. The idea of seeing bruises on Kurt's arm was ridiculous, and he'd never look through any emails Blaine was sending.

The idea of removing Jesse from Rachel's mind had tempted him for half a second after Rachel suggested it, though. Horror followed, but if he told the truth, he'd been tempted. The strength of his reaction had been driven by the need to prove to himself that he would never, ever go down that route. It was _wrong_ and he _knew_ it... but for half a second, some part of him had thought otherwise. And how long had he needed to brainwash Kurt? One second, or just a half?

Maybe, if he hadn't gotten so used to treating other people's brains like open books, his first reaction in his panic wouldn't have been to mindwipe his brother.

Carole managed a smile. "Some powers are good for everyday things and some powers have special circumstances. I bet you're glad you were able to stop that car from hitting Rachel and Kurt, weren't you?"

"Yeah." Telekinesis was good. Maybe he'd just use that. He wouldn't be like some creepy guy dropping roofies in people's drinks if he just used telekinesis. "Thanks, Mom."

She glanced at her phone when it rang, then put it away after reading a text. "Everyone's coming here and Rachel's dads are bringing over Kurt. I need to get ready. It sounds serious."

Finn froze. He was going to have to face _everyone?_ That wasn't good. Worry began to build like heartburn and he lunged for something near his hand like a life preserver. Until the front door opened, he toiled frantically. At the sound he froze again, not daring to move until he heard Burt's voice. He set back into motion, faster than before.

When the door opened again, and had to be welcoming Rachel and Kurt, Finn thought it was really brave of him to gather his courage and go immediately downstairs. "Hey," he said when the expected duo walked through the door. Hiram and Leroy pulled Carole off to the side to talk, leaving the teens alone. "Uh, I need to talk to you. Kurt, I'm really sorry for what I did. It was wrong. I shouldn't have done it and I hope I didn't mess up your brain at all. Yeah."

"Thanks," Kurt said warily. It didn't really sound like he'd accepted the apology, but rather that he cared too much about too many other things and couldn't be bothered to hold onto all his outrage. Finn wondered why he was wearing that camo jacket. Kurt looked super tired, too.

"Here," Finn said next to Rachel and extended his hand. "I didn't have much time, since Mom wanted to talk to me and then you came over. But take it," he added when she didn't.

"I'm still mad at you," Rachel said shortly. "And there are more important things to think about."

Frustrated, Finn opened the workbook he'd been tackling and showed her the completed sheet. "But see? I did one. And I'll do another one right now. Which one do you want me to do?" She folded her arms and looked away. "Come on, Rachel! You practically started crying when Sam did them!" _Girls are so hard to figure out,_ Finn thought with frustration, and automatically reached toward her brain to learn what would make her happy.

Just as quickly Finn stepped back, pale at what he'd so easily done. Carole was right: he had a lot of learning ahead of him. "I'm going to my room," Finn said. Rachel could stay down there, away from him, and Finn and Kurt could be upstairs, away from Puck. Even if Finn couldn't remember exactly what had happened between the two boys, he knew there was no way he wanted it to happen again. Clearly, Kurt's trip to Puck's hadn't been a good one, given how bad he looked. Finn would keep Puck away from a repeat encounter, and keep Kurt as happy as he could be on an all-around awful day. He owed that to his brother.

The door opened again. Finn tensed for the explosion of a Puck arrival, but thankfully, Burt returned instead. The man rushed to embrace Kurt when he saw him. "I heard what happened," Burt said and his voice sharpened in an instant. "Don't you _ever_ do something that stupid again, you hear me? You could've gotten yourself killed and that would have finished off the job my heart started last year. Is that what you want?"

"Sorry," Kurt said and clutched his jacket close. 

"Is that Puck's coat?" Finn asked before he could help it.

"No." Kurt stared at him. "I didn't see Puck. I never want to see Puck. I went to see Blaine."

Carole said apologetically, "Well, um, Kurt... everyone is coming over here, after all. It's kind of a 'hunker down' situation, it sounds like." She waited for the announcement to sink in that Puck would soon be there, whether Kurt wanted him or not.

"Fine," Kurt said. "Fine, then. I'm going upstairs and I'm going to take a long shower. Don't worry; I won't run again. I don't want to meet even one of those things alone and they traveled in a pack. But I _am_ going to take a long shower." No one questioned him again and he stalked toward the stairs. Carole and Finn parted to let him pass.

Finn began to follow him upstairs, aware of Rachel's sharp gaze, but hesitated on the first step. "One of what things?"

* * *

His mom had never been one for sticking with regulations, Puck thought as she handed him the phone. For once, it would be nice if she stuck more rigidly to the rules. "It's Lauren," she said. "I thought you might want to talk to her. You've had a rough day."

"Thanks," Puck said, but wished she'd run interference, instead. It would have been easier to hear a second-hand report of whatever Lauren had to say.

He loved Lauren. He did, or at least he really liked her and was heading in the right direction. Maybe it wasn't heavy-duty blockbuster movie love yet, but it didn't have to be that to be something good. They'd only really been talking for half a year, maybe a little more, but they'd done well at sorting out their priorities. He liked being around her. He felt like a better person.

Now, though, New York memories were like a rusty pitchfork in his chest. _That_ was blockbuster movie stuff: years of buildup producing big dramatic scenes that turned into a tragedy by the end. He still felt like his heart had been stomped on and he wanted to avoid explaining to his girlfriend why he was so miserable. There was no way to justify any of this to her. "Hey," he said into the phone, though he didn't want to.

"Hey," she said back. "Okay, good news. You can come over tomorrow, right?"

"Sure," Puck said. It wasn't like anyone else needed to see him, or needed him at all.

"Cool. We're gonna do a Twilight marathon."

Puck grimaced. "Look, I listen to you talk about Jacob whatever, but I don't know if I'm down for actually watching the movies."

"Jacob Black, aka Satan. Seriously, you're going to want to punch this guy in the face for trying to break up Bella and Edward."

Oh, yeah, what he really wanted to go through was an agonizingly boring movie where Lauren kept talking about how awful some third wheel was and how he messed up a perfect couple. That sounded completely fucking perfect. "Uh. No."

He seldom put his foot down, and when he did it was with a light enough touch that she could kick it away. He could hear a smirk in Lauren's voice when she spoke again. She'd clearly expected him to dig in his heels over the topic of Twilight. "Aren't you going to listen to what I have planned for _afterward?_ "

"Shoot," Puck said, but his attention immediately wandered.

_"I hate New York," Kurt said._

_"How can you hate New York?" Puck asked and threw a balled-up crust of hot dog bun into the pond. It fired into the water like a bullet, and he could swear the ducks shot him dirty looks. He laughed._

_"I just... I want to go somewhere different. Somewhere that's not here."_

_It wasn't surprising that Finn had overlooked how unhappy Kurt could be at home. Same with Rachel, even though she was so close to him. They'd never seen the warning signs for themselves. Finn could have noticed if he paid attention, but Finn was dumb._

_Puck understood, though. When Kurt wasn't busy doing some weird cultural thing with New Black Girl or New Asian Girl, Puck tried to spend time with him. It could be good to have someone to talk to, especially someone who knew how bad things could get._

_"Okay," Puck said and turned away from the ducks to face him. "Los Angeles. It's about as far as you can go without having to get a passport or learning to spell things weird."_

_"L.A.," Kurt said and smiled lopsidedly. "I don't think I seem very L.A."_

_"Sure you are," Puck said. "You could, like, make movie costumes and get an Oscar or something." Considering Kurt, he added with a grin, "And only go to the beach at night, so you don't burn up."_

_"Okay," Kurt said, humoring him. "I'll move to Los Angeles. I'll come back here for family holidays, and then go right back to my big bright life under the Hollywood sign." The dancing light in his eyes faded into something more sincere. "With my own place, with a yard. With grass. And a car so I can go wherever I want, whenever I want. A big car. A _huge_ , inefficient car that makes environmentalists scream, because those don't fit onto a New York street."_

_"I could do Los Angeles," Puck said as he pictured himself in a city with endless sunshine, beautiful people, and the dream of being recognized as someone great. Not that he had to move to where Kurt went, of course, but L.A. sounded kind of fun._

_"Oh, I'm sure you'd 'do' it, all right."_

_"You're a funny guy. You think the ducks would like your scarf?"_

_Kurt narrowed his eyes, but it was a comfortable move practiced over years' time. "Try it and I'll sic Rachel on you."_

_For the sake of his eardrums, Puck held up his hands and submitted. Then he balled up another bit of bread, took aim, and threw it as hard as he could. It rebounded off a duck's back, and it quacked and paddled away._

_"Jerk," Kurt said. That hurt a little, weirdly. Puck tore up the last bits of his bun. When he tossed them into the pond, they landed with soft splashes and were soon eaten._

"So?" Lauren asked and Puck realized he'd zoned completely out. He tried to catch up, but it was futile.

"Sorry, I just got distracted by a, uh, superhero note from Artie." Bad lie, but she bought it. "What'd you say?"

"I checked one of those superhero supply stores," Lauren said, "and they've got condoms."

"So does Walmart," Puck said. 

"Ones rated up to superhuman durability?" Lauren asked. "Yep. You get to wrap up and we get to get back to business."

Well, at least something in his life didn't suck. Puck tried to be excited about that, but it was a challenge to maintain enthusiasm while also ignoring the memories that kept floating up into his mind and heart. "Cool. Why didn't we use them before?"

"Well. The thing is, they're fifteen bucks a pop."

He hated his stupid fucking life sometimes, he really did.

"Noah," his mother said from the door, and he turned to see her holding her cell phone. "We need to go."

"Uh, I'm on the phone?" he said needlessly and pointed to it.

"It's an emergency," she said. "Come on. Sarah's in the car already, but I'm just dropping you off at Finn and Kurt's."

"What?" Puck asked, his eyes widening. There was no mistaking the look on her face, though: for once, rules were being enforced and there was no getting out of them. His whole tragic love life was about to get even more painful. Perfect. "I gotta go, my mom's making me get off the phone."

"Okay, talk to you later. Should I order some?"

"Sure," he said listlessly and hung up.

When they were in the car, speeding down the road, his mom quietly filled him in on what was happening. It turned out they might all die from those shadow monsters. Yeah. That seemed about right for how the day had gone.

* * *

Sue Sylvester had her own personal scale for skill at self-promotion.

At the bottom of the scale was the Democratic Party.

Next came Lindsay Lohan.

Above her was Charlie Sheen.

Second to last was the Republican Party.

And at the very top of the list sat the best there was: Sue Sylvester. If she blew her nose efficiently, her Cheerios heard about it. When she discovered a really great place for Chinese takeout, she shut down lunchroom discussions until every last faculty member at McKinley had promised to order from there. They'd all tell the owners that Sue sent them. It wasn't that she expected to earn any favors; she just liked for the people in that town to know the sort of power she wielded.

More impressive than any of that, though, was how good Sue was at her _real_ work. She'd done a bang-up job of convincing those families that she was the go-to woman for just about anything the world could throw at them. Aliens could pour out of another dimension entirely, and every last one of those parents would trust Sue Sylvester with their child's life. But on that point, her skills at self-promotion had failed her.

She was even better than she'd let on.

Few others would have heard one single line—that Matt Rutherford had been watching the school—and been able to pick out immediately what it meant. But Sue had seen the behavior of someone influenced by outside parties. People living their ordinary lives were banal, boring, and obnoxious, even when they were responsible for saving the world. People telling lies, though... they overcompensated. Someone who simply forgot to do a task would say as much, maybe vaguely mention the burst basement pipe they'd been dealing with, and apologize. Someone who'd lied about it would concoct a story that was too detailed, too perfect, and then offer to do too much to make up for their 'mistake.'

Real data didn't look real. It had duplicated numbers and improbable strings. She'd found out a cheating scientist when his data looked too perfectly random, and of course she was right.

So when someone offered to come back to Lima _by choice_ to continue a mission he'd already admirably fulfilled, Sue knew what was going on. She didn't simply suspect: she knew. Sue picked up her office phone and dialed a number few people had access to, belonging to one of the rare agents as skilled as herself. "Phil," she said when he picked up. "It's Sue. Are you near a locked computer?"

"Good to talk to you too, Sue. How's life in Ohio?"

Her gaze flattened. "We've got a situation here, Coulson, and I need some information ASAP. My project is under threat."

His tone was all business, then. "What do you need?"

"I want you to look over the report Agent Rutherford submitted on the adoption application for that newborn. Corcoran, Shelby."

"Got it," he soon said.

"Does it look legitimate?"

"At first glance," he said, but she knew he had to be reading it more thoroughly. It was what she'd be doing, and as much as she hated to admit it, he could match her. "She seems to just be a random choir director."

"Is she really?"

"Let me cross-reference these contacts," he said and began the work of gliding across the intricate web of human connections that made up a life. Sue stayed quiet. "I don't know if these personal references look right," he eventually admitted.

"Don't tell me any of them were dead." 

"Be serious; you know none of our people are sloppy enough to miss that." Phil sounded almost offended at the suggestion. "I'll check her educational history, yearbook photos...." By that point he was well out of the formal application and was cross-examining Shelby Corcoran's entire identity. "Sue, we've got a problem."

"Talk."

"The copyright notice on her yearbook says that the publisher is headquartered in Lansing. They were still headquartered in Battle Creek until two years later. This yearbook has to be a fake."

"Dammit." Her fist rebounded off the desk. "I knew it. He covered for some woman and got her the child of two metahumans under S.H.I.E.L.D. protection. I don't know why, yet, but he got Beth into the hands of someone who never should have had her."

"How'd you know to look at Rutherford?" Phil asked.

"He came back to Lima when Fury was already asking two other agents to verify my reports."

Phil sucked air through his teeth. "Never trust an agent who offers to do grunt work."

"I used 'busy work,' but my thoughts exactly." An alarm blared through the school and her attention jerked away. Those weren't special S.H.I.E.L.D. sensors; only her office and the choir room were equipped with that level of technology. That noise was something else. "I have to go," Sue said. "Research Corcoran more. Get Rutherford into custody."

"What's that sound?"

Sue grimaced as she heard something explode in the distance, and quickly gathered a few key things. "I'm about ninety-nine percent sure that someone is in the process of burning down the school," she said. "Backup would be nice."

"They're on a skeleton crew right now, this is a bad time—"

"Find someone," Sue said, hung up, and glanced through her office window. _Energy,_ she thought darkly as she poured a water bottle over a Cheerios t-shirt, pressed it to her nose, and began running through halls already hazy with smoke. The Rifts craved energy but hadn't yet found the kids, and so thermal energy would have to do in a pinch. Burning down McKinley had the added benefit of removing a hiding place that the kids might otherwise use, too. From what she saw as she ran, there had to be multiple fires, not just a single flashpoint. There must be dozens of them working.

_That backup needs to come soon,_ Sue thought as she shoved open a door and made it to the fresh air of the parking lot. She could hear sirens in the distance, but there was too much smoke pouring from McKinley's windows. Even if they saved the building, it would be too damaged for classes that fall. 

So much for playing the role of a cheerleading coach. The next phase of her mission had begun: assault, not sentry. 

As she stood below a black plume billowing into the sky, Sue knew things would get worse before they had a chance of getting better. Her jaw clenched, and then she sped off in her car before whatever was in that building could swarm her. She did need backup, as little as she liked to admit it. If Coulson was right—and annoyingly, he was always right—then it might take a few days for someone to arrive from headquarters. They'd have to make do with what they had, and who they had. She only wished the town had more to offer.


	21. Collateral Damage

Kurt could just hear people arriving over the sound of the rushing water. He closed his eyes, turned his face back to the showerhead, and ignored them. The fan was off and so steam built up inside the bathroom. Kurt inhaled it deeply. He was relaxed. He was relaxed. He wanted to punch things and then pass out. He was relaxed.

_Hi,_ Kurt heard in his head when he was carefully massaging a second round of conditioner through his hair. _I'm really sorry to be in your brain again, especially when you're, um, naked and stuff, but they said I have to make sure you're still here._

_I'm here,_ Kurt thought back without arguing. He wasn't going to run again, not with those things out there.

_Thanks, bye,_ Finn quickly thought and left him alone to finish his shower.

Eventually Kurt felt the hot water start to ebb and finished. Once done, he didn't rush back to his room. Kurt pulled on a heavy terrycloth robe, sat in front of the fogged mirror, and spent another meditative minute breathing in the lingering steam. 

It wasn't as if Noah Puckerman had been a big part of his life in Lima. They'd gotten along, and quite well in recent months, but that was it. Kurt wouldn't suffer much by cutting Puck entirely out of his day-to-day world, and so that was what he'd do. His younger self in New York had been an idiot, that much was clear from how Finn had talked so harshly about the memories that Kurt got back. Whatever he'd been doing in New York, that weaker boy had clearly let himself get pulled into falling in love with the exact same boy who'd delighted in humiliating him. 

Kurt stared at the outline of his face in the clouded mirror and remembered Finn's haunted expression. Yes. He'd let _that boy_ touch him. The idea was so horrifying that the best thing to do—the only thing to do—was to cut the modern boy out of his life. He'd had an awful lot of awful moments in his short existence, and had finally found somewhere good. The memory of throwing himself at Blaine to prove their connection made his cheeks burn with shame, and Kurt knew it was definitely better to avoid the problem entirely. Avoid _Puck_ entirely.

Without the shower running, he could hear people talking downstairs. Everyone was probably there, including Puck. He'd be sprawled sloppily in a seat, making hurtful jokes and offering unwanted assessments of people's bodies. Trying to wheedle a beer out of Burt. Looking around to see where Kurt—

_Hmph._ After shaking his head, Kurt deliberately reached for a bottle of lotion. It wasn't simply a delay tactic; his hands needed it after hopping between trucks, scaling a tree, and killing something. 

His fingers stilled as he turned over the bottle. 

_I really killed that thing._ An impossible-looking monster had come screaming out of a sunlit sky for his head, and he'd taken its head, instead. With one smooth motion he'd cut it apart and felt his target start bleeding out all over his chest. It was far more natural a sensation than it should have been, Kurt thought, and only then realized that he'd let far too much lotion out onto his palm. His nose wrinkled. It was good stuff, and expensive. He liked to save it for his hands.

Oh well. No putting toothpaste back in the tube, and no putting eighty-dollar moisturizer back in the bottle. He shrugged down the top half of the robe and spread the lotion everywhere, so it wouldn't go to waste. The scent of lavender built and soon a strange, urgent worry overwhelmed Kurt. "You're supposed to be soothing," he muttered at the bottle as he grabbed for tissues and wiped away the excess. "So much for aromatherapy."

Still, lavender choked him. In the fragrant, steamy room, memories soon did the same. He could see his old apartment. He could hear his first father talking angrily to someone, and somehow Kurt knew his target was Puck. Finn—nearly as tall as he was now—put his hand on Kurt's shoulder and squeezed, saying it wasn't his fault. God, what was wrong with him if he'd picked a boyfriend that his father and brother both hated?

"Kurt?" Carole said through the door. "Come on downstairs. We're trying to keep everyone together so we can watch you."

And there was the buzzer. He closed his eyes. Stress made his breathing shallow. "I just... I need to dry my hair, then I'll come down." 

"All right. Hurry as much as you can. I'm sure Sue will keep things under control, but we shouldn't push our luck."

Kurt finished getting ready with choppy, mechanical movements. His hairstyle was the most common one he'd used recently, as he couldn't spare the focus to experiment. Unable to consider details, he pulled on a simple tee, jeans just tight enough to have some style, and a light military jacket. When he realized he was considering fastening every last button, he gave up delaying any further and walked downstairs.

"Hey," Mercedes said when she saw him at the top of the stairs, and smiled. Tina waved. Mike nodded. Rachel and Finn watched him very seriously, though, and didn't say a word.

Kurt barely noticed any of them. Despite wanting to ignore Puck, he latched right onto his face and stared into his—

_warm, concerned, gorgeous_

—eyes with challenge. _Stop it,_ he told his traitorous heart, and closed it like a bank vault. This was not the boy who'd carried him to safety when he was bleeding. This was not the boy who'd said he would keep Kurt safe, or who'd worked with him like it was second nature when they wanted to cheer up Rachel. This was the boy from two years ago who smiled when Kurt flinched. Recalling that old behavior had made Finn knee-jerk in the spectacularly stupid way that only Finn could. Kurt wanted nothing to do with any part of him.

The room quieted, person by person, and Kurt realized he'd stopped on the stairs. Everyone had turned to look at him, and thanks to his dramatic entrance he'd inadvertently let himself become the center of attention. "I've been telling them how you fought those things," Rachel said after looking around the crowd. "The Rifts, with Ms. Sylvester."

"What did they look like?" asked Quinn.

"Did you actually kill one?" asked Artie.

"Are those new swords?" asked Mercedes, squinting at him.

Startled, Kurt felt his hips and registered that he'd attached both of Sue's gifts to his belt. Even if he did plan to reject her offer, some part of his brain must have known that it only made sense to protect himself until things were settled. "Coach Sylvester gave them to me," he said after a short pause. Santana rolled her eyes and smirked, which he didn't understand but didn't bother to consider. "And yes. I killed one. They look like a person made out of shadows, I suppose. Like they steal the light just by standing there."

"Was it trying to hurt you?" Mike asked, sounding very worried.

Puck stared at Kurt, though he didn't say a word, and looked intently focused on his answer.

"Yes, I'm sure it was trying to kill me," Kurt said. That set everyone to chattering again, but he ignored them and resumed walking downstairs. Finn had reserved his favorite chair with a stack of books, which he moved when Kurt approached. His smile was nervous and hopeful: a puppy trying to make amends after it accidentally wet its owner's favorite shoes. Kurt curled up in the chair and adjusted his weapons until he was comfortable. "Thanks."

"Do you have a headache or anything?" Finn asked. He looked relieved when Kurt shook his head.

"Now that everyone is here," Rachel continued, and stood at the center of the group, "we have to discuss something else." She looked directly at Puck, and Kurt tensed for the seemingly inevitable talk of their past, but instead turned to Quinn. "Before Ms. Sylvester left, she heard that Matt had been watching us. I won't go into all the details, but she's concerned now that he was spying... and that he authorized Shelby to adopt Beth when he shouldn't have."

Blessedly, Puck's attention ripped away from Kurt. He and Quinn both leaned toward Rachel. "Wait, is Shelby bad?" Puck asked. Worry creased his face. "Is Beth not safe?" 

"Is something going to happen to her?" Quinn asked.

"I don't know," Rachel said. "Right now Sue's working on finding out what really happened. I'm sure she'll be done soon and we'll know everything. But," she continued after a reluctant pause, "doesn't anyone think it's strange that we never thought about Shelby before now? We don't know if Beth has powers or not and no one's thought to check. Obviously, something odd is going on."

"I don't care what's going on," Puck said. "If she's in trouble, we've gotta get her somewhere safe." His voice was full of conviction. Once again he was the boy who'd kept Kurt safe after he collapsed in an alley. The boy who'd blocked a car with his body. Kurt's eyes lingered a bit too long when he wondered just how the pieces had fallen into place during their Manhattan years, and Puck saw him looking.

Kurt folded in on himself and stared at the floor. He could remember being picked up like he was nothing and curling against Puck for hours as they drove home. Now that made him dizzy and sick. He tried to focus instead on Blaine, but all he could think of was how he'd pressed his body against Blaine's and offered himself up like currency. After that, Kurt tried not to think of anything.

"Jacob made a video with Shelby, right?" Brittany asked Rachel, rubbing Quinn's shoulder as she did. Santana squeezed Quinn's hand. "Do you know where she was?"

"Her video looked like it was in an apartment," Rachel said, "but I suppose it could have been anywhere."

With a wary glance toward the door, Artie pulled his laptop out of his bag and started typing. Neither Burt nor Carole noticed; Kurt could hear them making noise upstairs. "My parents let me have this," he explained in a low voice. "Looks like they put a new secure password on your wifi here, but I just signed on to your neighbors' account." 

"You're gonna get into trouble," Mercedes said.

"Again, my parents said I could have this," Artie said, like it made any difference. "I'm supposed to be looking up the news so we'll know if we're in danger." Many of the kids scooted closer to watch him work. Kurt didn't move, but the angle still let him see what was going on: Artie was going straight to Jacob's site. "I really don't remember taking that picture," he said as the front page loaded.

Santana leaned over. "That's because it's a bunch of porn stars with our faces on them." 

"Oh. That'd explain it." Artie's head tilted. "They must have gotten bored waiting for more news stories."

The general audience apparently hadn't heard about his and Finn's genetic ties. Kurt tried not to look at what their Photoshopped stand-ins were doing to each other, but turning away from the monitor resulted in him looking at Puck. He stared at his fingernails, instead.

"Look," Puck said after a beat. "We need to talk. Doesn't have to be right now, 'cause we're dealing with this, but—"

"I'm not talking to you," Kurt said, and risked meeting Puck's eyes again when he stayed quiet.

They were liquid with pain. "Fine," Puck said and closed off. He stared fixedly at Artie's screen as they clicked past the front page, and Kurt did the same.

"What's with you two?" Santana asked and looked between them. "Did Puck ruin one of your 'expensive shirts?'" Kurt had no idea why that phrase earned fingerquotes and didn't bother asking. "Come on," she wheedled. "It's going to take Artie a while to get this done, and I am seriously missing my TMZ. This screams gossip."

"You want gossip?" Kurt asked. "I'm sorry, was the discussion about me _killing something_ not juicy enough for you? Would it have been more exciting if I'd come in here dragging my own arm behind me? Good to know you're as self-centered as ever, Lopez."

She snorted and Kurt realized everyone was exchanging glances. He'd overreacted. "Someone missed his nap," Santana said with a mock pout. "Which makes sense, since you look like a toddler raised by Liberace and Lady Gaga."

"Santana, just... shut up," Finn said. "He's had a bad day, okay?" Even if Finn hadn't neatly sidestepped his contribution to that 'bad day,' Kurt still would have wanted to groan. It was exactly the wrong thing to say. Santana looked excited about the easy targets in front of her.

"Stop!" Rachel said. Light exploded against Finn and Santana's chests. They didn't seem injured, only startled, and broke off their argument before it could grow. "Kurt, while Artie tries to learn more about Shelby, why don't you tell us what you did with Ms. Sylvester earlier?"

"She, uh." He ran a hand over his face. He was tired. "She tracked me down at Blaine's. I ran over there."

"Like ran, ran?" Tina asked, frowning. "Why'd you do that? Just ask for someone to drive you."

"It was sort of... long story, never mind." Kurt glanced at Finn, hoping that he wouldn't speak up. Unable to help it, he looked at Puck next. The boy looked wounded at the mention of Blaine's name. _Good_ , like he had any right to be jealous. He _should_ feel bad at the comparison. "On the way back, she saw something chasing us. We killed them."

Everyone seemed in disbelief that it was that simple. "How?" Brittany asked, wide-eyed.

"She shot them with these—"

"Glowing bullets," Mercedes said. "I remember them from... I don't know when. Before. She mentioned them in the gym, but I remember really seeing them in action."

Kurt nodded and continued. They'd become used to memories bubbling up. "One Rift got through and I had to use this." He gestured to a sword. "And if that never happens again, it'll be too soon, believe me."

In a flash, Mike was sitting on his armrest. The superspeed nearly made Kurt double-take. "Are we going to be okay if they come for us?"

Everyone not watching Artie's search for Shelby stared at him. "If you can hit them from a distance, it's better," he said, and nodded to Quinn, Santana, and Rachel. After some consideration of the telekinesis, he nodded at Finn as well. "They were scary up close."

"What about the rest of us?" Mike asked.

"I... why are you asking me?" Kurt asked. "Coach Sylvester is handling this! This is her territory." That didn't tone down their interest and Mike still loomed over Kurt like some anxious buzzard. "She's the one outfitted for this. She has... she has special bullets, and special swords and sensors, and files that lay out exactly what they did to us," Kurt said. He couldn't help but wonder what S.H.I.E.L.D. said about him. What memories had they hidden? How had they guided him into this new life? Then he saw Puck out of the corner of his eye and shut down that line of thought again. His new life was better, and so his old life didn't matter.

Unfortunately, no one else was willing to throw away that topic. Kurt tried to shrink down into his seat when everyone's attention grew, not diminished. "Wait. That file. Where is it?" Mercedes asked. "Can we get it?"

"She said they were in her office," Kurt said, shrugged, and hoped they'd move on. Oh, his stupid mouth. Now even Artie's group was staring at him.

"We have to get those files," Quinn said.

"They're in Sue Sylvester's office," Kurt repeated.

"And we have eleven different sets of superpowers," Mercedes said. "There's gotta be a way to get it."

"I don't know," Finn said reluctantly. "It's not like any of us have powers over paper."

"You are not allowed to speak again today," Santana said. "You've reached your quota and the EPA says we can limit your stupidity by law." Rachel looked annoyed, but neither did she stick up for Finn. Even under all his stress, Kurt wondered what had fallen out between them.

Brittany giggled at Santana, then looked around the group. "She's really missed you guys."

"You mean having us around to insult?" Mercedes asked.

Santana shrugged. "Yeah, like she said."

Quinn cleared her throat. "Guys, we're focused on getting that file from Sue? And finding Shelby?"

Artie looked warily at the archway leading out of the living room. "I still hear their parents making noise upstairs, so they probably can't hear us. I bet I could disable the alarm with my laptop long enough for a couple of people to go outside."

Sounding very intent on an answer, Puck asked, "You seriously think you can get the file?"

"Sure. Maybe." Artie shrugged. "It's not... impossible."

Puck looked torn, then said, "Okay. You can't just stop working on looking up Shelby, but you _have_ to get it."

What the hell was wrong with everyone? Kurt glared at the group and found his ire settling most comfortably on Puck. If he couldn't look away from him, at least he'd be angry when he stared. "So much for your daughter." If he'd been momentarily unsettled by how protective and caring Puck seemed over Beth, it was comforting to know that could be so easily erased.

"I'm gonna save her if she needs to be saved," Puck said. His stare was even more intense, and though he tried to avoid it, Kurt found himself blinking first. "But we have to know what's in that file so we can know what they did to us." He swallowed. "If they changed us."

Ah, Kurt thought, and smirked. He wanted an _excuse._

"So... we're seriously considering sneaking out and getting that file from Sue before she realizes we're coming after it." Quinn looked around everyone. "Okay, this sounds like one of those moments when someone says this is ridiculous, and something that no one should actually agree to."

"And then we go for it anyway because we're teenagers, right," Artie said. She smiled at him.

"Just making sure," Quinn said and turned to the group. "Obviously Kurt has to sneak into her office."

"No," Kurt said flatly and curled up more in his chair like an irritated cat. "She has cameras in her office. They see through the invisibility."

"Tina goes with you," Artie said thoughtfully, "and I stay here. If I can't deactivate the cameras remotely with my computer, then Tina can just suck the energy out of them."

"No," Kurt repeated with more force. "We're not going out there." 

"Kurt," Tina said, "are you going to start acting like you did when we first got our powers? Because that was kind of annoying."

"It really was," Mercedes agreed and they began to discuss him in detail.

"God, will you all just shut up?" Kurt nearly shouted and any other conversations broke off. "There are things out there that want to kill us. This is not a game. I had blood all over me an hour ago. Whoever we were in New York doesn't matter, whatever we were doing doesn't matter, because the people we are now? Are about to die."

Everyone looked away. Maybe Kurt should have shut up, but his mouth just wouldn't stop. "We're idiots. The first time we tried something big, we nearly got locked up. The second, time, we nearly died. Well, now we get both. Yay for us." His jaw set. "And some of us know what happened in New York and we don't want to talk about our pasts, because there is _nothing_ good lurking there."

Puck narrowed his eyes. "Look, I'm not going to defend anything I did in Lima, but what the hell was wrong with New York?"

"Thankfully, I don't know," Kurt said. "Because Finn saw how horrible you were and so now I don't have to deal with the firsthand memories."

Finn blinked in confusion. "Um, I got into trouble, so you probably shouldn't sound happy over what I did."

"But I wasn't...." Puck rounded on Finn. "What the hell, dude? Okay, yeah, I was a dick in Ohio, but what did I do wrong there?"

"Um, everything?" Finn said with a dramatic, mocking shrug. "I can remember how you made him look and: holy shit."

"I'm so lost right now," Brittany said.

"What did Puck do to Kurt in New York?" Artie asked, and then lunged backward with his laptop clutched to his chest like body armor. "Oh dear god. No, that's not right at all."

"What?" Santana asked, but her eyes widened as memories unearthed. She said the answer with Artie: "They were totally doing it."

"What?" Mercedes and Tina nearly screeched and looked between Kurt and Puck with huge eyes. "Oh," Tina said after a second, knowingly. "Right. Wow. Okay. Wow."

If Kurt didn't stop being the center of attention right that second, he was going to scream. He really, really was. Puck being the focus with him only made it worse. "Can we please talk about something else?" he asked tightly.

"But... I don't get it," Quinn said to Puck. "You're not gay. I found that out for myself, unfortunately," she added, muttering.

"What I don't understand about this drama fest," Mercedes said before Quinn could continue, "is that you guys were... okay, correct me if I'm wrong? But do you remember them as being really, um...."

"Adorable," Tina finished.

As much of the group began to agree that their memories of Puck and Kurt together had been so _romantic_ and _perfect_ , Kurt's glare intensified. Puck had moved past his pain into nothing but anger, as well. "Well, that's how he operates," Kurt said. Puck's eyes flashed darker. "Every day before school, he would say hello and act like we were friends to anyone watching. And then he would throw me into the trash. He's great at pretending."

"I never hurt you there," Puck gritted out. "Look, I'll take the blame for being a piece of shit here, but you don't get to pile stuff on me that I didn't even do." He leaned over to Artie and shoved his laptop back into place. "Find Shelby, find Beth."

"Seriously, this doesn't make sense," Mercedes said after a stretch of uncomfortable silence, interrupted only by the sounds of Burt and Carole checking the house's perimeter. "Kurt, now that we're talking about it, I can remember you telling me about Puck. And if you guys weren't happy, you were making a big deal of lying about it."

"Can we stop talking about me and Puck?" Kurt asked again, loudly. "He has a girlfriend, and I have a boyfriend who doesn't style his hair like he's auditioning for backup vocals in The Misfits."

"Yeah, he's aiming for Archie Comics," Puck said with a sneer.

"I swear to god, if you insult Blaine again I will make you regret it," Kurt snapped. "I cut off a head today. My bar's already pretty high!"

"What is going on?" Everyone turned to face Burt, who looked more than a bit tense about whatever argument was happening in his living room. "Guys, you need to stay calm, okay?"

"We will, Dad," Kurt instantly said and folded his hands in his lap.

"That's... how'd you get a computer?" Burt asked and squinted at Artie. "You're not supposed to have one."

"My parents said I could," Artie said. "They thought I could, you know, look up stuff on the news. Help find any clues about where those things are." 

"Fine," Burt said after a short pause. "We've just about shielded all the windows, so it's just going to be a matter of hunkering down until Sue and Rachel's dads say it's okay to leave. You, uh... kid in the wheelchair...."

"Artie."

"Artie, right," Burt said apologetically. "Just don't start chatting with anyone, okay? Hold yourself to looking up what's going on. I don't know what the big plan is, but these S.H.I.E.L.D. people know what they're doing. Just... it'll work out. You'll see."

"But Kurt said we're all going to die," Brittany said and Burt rounded on his son with raised eyebrows.

"Sorry," Kurt muttered. "Wasn't trying to get everyone all fired up."

"I'm going to go check the alarms again," Burt said after giving him a pointed look. "Carole'll sit in here with you while I do the last checks. She's not trained like Sue, but she's good. She'll keep you kids safe." On cue, Carole walked in with a rifle strapped to her shoulder. Everyone started, including Burt. "Uh, that's new."

"I kept it in my old hope chest," she explained and sat down to check her weapon. Everyone gave her space. After one last look around the room, Burt exhaled, nodded, and left them there with Carole.

"Mom?" Finn asked after contorting himself so he could see her face as she worked on her gun. "You look really upset. What's wrong?"

"We obviously have aliens coming for our heads," Santana said, "and so you just violated your EPA regulation with that stupid question, Hudson."

After a dark look for the girl, Carole shook her head. "I'm an inactive agent, but I still know who to call. I requested backup."

Everyone smiled, or at least relaxed. Even Kurt found himself unwinding some tiny bit. Soon every last one of them would have a personal bodyguard, and there would be no chance of anyone or anything getting to them. "When do the other agents arrive?" Rachel asked.

"They don't." Carole looked grim. "They don't have any to spare, not for a couple of days."

Everyone stared, and Artie managed a weak laugh. "Didn't they say that us falling into the wrong hands could kill _everyone?_ "

She hesitated before saying, "This is classified and you can't repeat it. S.H.I.E.L.D. is working with the Russian government to stop rogue factions from lifting bioweapons from old Soviet labs. Bad ones, ones they didn't even know they were there. One dropper-full could wipe out western Europe."

"But," Quinn began, but Carole wasn't done.

"An undersea base in the middle of the Pacific is being assaulted before it can set off earthquakes. Political leaders who have been replaced by aliens are being quietly removed before they sent the planet into years of nuclear winter. Scientists are sealing a dimensional tear in Madagascar." Her shoulders were tight. "This is a busy stretch, but it's not unheard of. Sometimes it feels like S.H.I.E.L.D. stops the world from ending every week, even though hardly anything makes it to the public eye."

"So that's why they could only spare one agent for us," Quinn said. "Even though we're apparently global risks, they had to just hand us to Sue and hope for the best. Good to know we've been so well taken care of."

"Guys?" Artie said.

Carole patted her rifle. Her smile was almost convincing. "Don't worry. We'll keep everything under control until then. We just... we will. We will."

"Hello?" Artie asked.

"Kurt," Carole said, "you've been doing all that cooking this week. Why don't you go into the kitchen and put together trays for people? We might as well actually eat the snacks, and there are a lot of people here."

"Good idea," Kurt said and leapt on the chance to get away from Puck. When he stood, Puck glowered but watched every step. Though he'd planned to bolt for the safety of his Gladware and Saran Wrap, Kurt stopped behind Artie's laptop as he passed it, and stared. "Wait. Is that...?"

"What I was trying to tell you," Artie confirmed weakly and turned the laptop around to show the current top news story for Lima, Ohio: the huge firestorm that was being battled at William McKinley High School.

Everyone was quiet for a long beat. "I assume none of us think that fire started by accident," Rachel said in a low voice. 

"They're burning down the school because they think we might be there?" Mike asked just above a whisper.

"Do you think anyone was inside?" Mercedes asked.

"Today's football practice day," Finn said as he stared. "Coach Beiste could have been in the locker room if they ran late. Or the guys on the team. Oh my god, they could be dead."

"They could be dead because of us," Puck said and shuddered. The room followed suit as they realized how unpleasantly _real_ things were. That things really could work out for the worst. That any deaths would be, at least in part, on their heads.

Kurt looked unhappily at the crowd clustering around Artie's laptop. Well, they believed what he'd said about the threat they faced. Too bad it had taken that dramatic of a demonstration to do it. He went off to gather food and drinks for everyone, reveling in the short span of privacy, and then returned with a wide selection in hand. No one took a thing.

* * *

An hour passed in relative silence, even as the town was in chaos around them. Artie's attempts to research Shelby Corcoran were constantly interrupted by another demand to check the latest stories on McKinley, or to see if more fires had erupted. Eventually Carole gave up, retrieved Kurt's laptop, and let them use that for news reading while Artie focused on his work.

"Hey," Mercedes said as she sat next to Kurt. "You okay? You seem pretty torn up about the Puck thing."

"Shouldn't I be?" he asked bitterly as they watched a streaming newsfeed of the fire spreading to cars in the parking lot. The summer heat wasn't helping the firefighters as it lingered into evening, and it had been a long time since rain.

"Well, I mean... no?" Mercedes held up her hands when Kurt glared at her. "Don't give me that look. I know it's crazy to even think about, but you two _were_ cute together." She made a face. "It's really weird."

"I have a boyfriend, Mercedes," Kurt said sharply. "I'm not going to cheat on him."

She eyed him. "Didn't say you were."

"I don't...." His fist rebounded off the armrest. "I am choosing what my love life is going to be like for the first time ever. I'm choosing my whole life. It does not involve Puck. Or being a hero. Or having a code name. End of story." Burt had come through the door just as Kurt finished, and he decided to wring out what information he could from his adoptive father. "Dad?"

"Yeah?" Burt asked and crouched close.

"Did you know about Puck?" Kurt asked. "How much did they tell you about my old life?"

Burt frowned at Puck, who saw him and frowned back. "I didn't know. I really didn't know much of anything, Kurt, except for what kind of kid you were: good. I just know I didn't like the punk."

Well, that was no wonder, with how Puck had vandalized their old house. Maybe Burt had even caught him at it. "Okay," Kurt said morosely. "Thanks."

As Burt clapped his shoulder and squeezed comfortingly, Kurt noticed Santana snorting from across the room. After the day he'd had, he was so not in the mood to coddle Santana Lopez's ego. "What?" he snapped. "What has been your problem with me today?"

"I don't have a problem," Santana said, grinning. "I'm actually way better ever since I realized something about you."

"And what is that?" Kurt asked. Burt looked ready to step in and break up a fight, but Santana seemed oddly happy despite her determination to poke Kurt with a stick.

"Well, for one, the Puck thing is hilarious," Santana said. She looked at where Puck watched Artie work, and smirked when he glowered as deeply toward her as he had for Burt. "Especially when I picture what you guys looked like at fifteen. In other words: he looked fifteen and you were due to be delivered any day, now."

"Is there a point to this?" Burt asked her, with a tone that suggested she'd better make it quickly and with few insults to his beloved son.

She looked between the two of them: father and son, comforting hands, matching eyes. For an instant she looked pained, but then it was all slick self-confidence again. "Okay, so you're like the marshall of his gay pride parade. I get that. Whatever. I don't need huggy, weepy parents anyway." She tossed her ponytail over her shoulder. "But I found out that our powers occasionally bubbled up even when they were blocked."

"And?" Kurt asked.

"I just felt so much better about how you got handed _everything_ ," Santana said, "when I realized that all this time you've actually been wearing Wal-Mart hand-me-downs and driving some old minivan with rusted-out sides." At Burt and Kurt's matching blank stares, she shrugged and added, "I mean, you change tires for a living. You've gotta be clipping yourself some mighty big coupons."

"I own my own business," Burt said, "which provides for a lot of people's wages, and I do a damn good job at it. Who the hell do you think you are?"

Kurt, meanwhile, stared at Santana and wondered if her brain had ceased to function. He was so not ready to deal with more stupidity at that point in the day. "Are you kidding?"

"Nope," Santana said. "All those times when you were prancing around in a fancy coat, acting like you were better than everyone? Not real. Your daddy buying you a land yacht for your sweet sixteen? Fake, fake, fake."

"You saw how I freaked out over my first illusion, Santana," Kurt said in disbelief. "Do you think I would have gone _two years_ without ever noticing that I was wearing a bunch of clothes that I'd never bought? Like, 'oh, where'd this Lanvin jacket come from, I must not have remembered dropping that twenty-two hundred dollars?'"

Her smile froze on her face, and she looked over his military jacket without moving anything but her eyes.

"And I fix my own car!" he said, picking up steam now that he'd been forced into confronting yet _another_ irritation. "You need the right parts! If I'd thought I was changing the oil on one model but was reaching up to something else, I couldn't have even found the pan!"

Santana swallowed hard. She didn't simply look envious: she looked hurt. "How'd you afford all that, then? How did everything just work out for you?"

Burt, his voice tight, said, "I've got some patent royalties coming in from my old job. If Kurt wanted something, if it'd make him happy, I figured there was nothing better to spend it on. And I don't see how that's any of your business, quite frankly."

"Fine," she said and folded her arms. "Whatever. He gets the perfect life. Good for him."

"Yes," Kurt said and laughed bitterly. "I get the perfect life. I get to be one of the least popular kids in the least popular group in the school, constantly humiliated and threatened, run out of the one good thing I had. And then the entire school kicks me in the ribs again with their ballots just to make sure I really feel it. I'm sure your life looks just horrible in comparison, with how they decided you needed to start here as the super-popular cheerleader with two best friends and the entire school at her feet. I'm crying for you. Truly. I'm weeping." He shoved Burt's arm away and stalked back to the kitchen. Someone would follow him, of that he was sure; he could only hope it wouldn't be Santana.

The eventual light footsteps did sound like her, but thankfully a different voice spoke up. "It's been really hard for her to know she doesn't have a real family any more," Quinn said. "She's jealous of your dad."

Kurt turned to face her. "Well, I'm jealous of people who haven't been constantly hurt and humiliated during their entire time here. So I guess we can both wonder why they decided our lives needed to be so hard, right?" His smile looked like a crack in a block of ice. "At least she has the excuse that they could only use parents who would agree to move here. Someone decided that, given every possible future, I _needed_ to have everyone hate me. That I _needed_ to be a target. And that two of those people would be my own brother and my...." Trailing off, he hugged himself and looked at the floor.

"Finn's really your brother," Quinn said, simply wanting a confirmation.

Kurt sighed and nodded. A calendar hung on the side of the fridge. "Our birthday's in three days. Happy eighteenth."

"And you were in love with Puck."

Kurt flinched at the bald statement.

"Kurt?" Quinn asked, taking a step closer. "I mean this in only the nicest way: shut up and listen to what I have to say, because if there's anyone who has Puck issues here, I get to claim that title."

"But—"

"Did you wind up with a boyfriend you didn't really care about?"

He was determined not to lose this fight. "No, a boyfriend I _love_ , who was halfway convinced that I was cheating on him!"

"Well, sorry," Quinn said and shrugged. "Meanwhile, on some level I knew I shouldn't be with Finn, so it was easy to decide to have some drinks and 'cheat' on him. And thanks to the fallout from what they did to _my_ memories, I got to push out a watermelon."

Trying not to pout, Kurt folded his arms and looked away. That did sound like a worse violation. Fine.

"My dad threw me out. My old parents were just... they loved me, but they didn't go the extra mile. Now, to everyone's eyes I get to be the cheerleader who got pregnant and the girl whose dad took off."

"What's your point?" Kurt asked flatly.

"We all have issues." Quinn took a deliberate step forward. "It took me until today to decide that I was going to give Judy a chance to really be my mom. Both you and I were incredibly obnoxious about our powers at first, while other people were excited." Her eyes dropped, shielded by her impossibly long lashes. "And I was mean to you for absolutely no good reason. Everyone was. I fell from the very top rung on the social ladder, but people always kept pushing you down in the mud to get even a little bit higher."

Kurt quietly retrieved a can of something diet and started drinking, because he didn't trust himself to find the right words. He wasn't sure if he should argue or agree. Perhaps both.

"Rachel was nearly as bad off as you were. Mercedes, Tina, Artie... why didn't they have friends? Why did I? Why was Finn so popular? Why did your brother get everything and you got nothing?" Her voice was so soft, and full of pain. "Why did they shove me into a relationship where I was nothing more than a distraction and leave me to deal with the fallout?"

Kurt looked at her despite himself, and their eyes locked. His fingernail twitched nervously against the tab of his can. "Who thought they could play around with our lives like this?" he asked, voice thick, and she nodded.

"I really want to see that file," Quinn said. "And I have to know that my daughter is safe."

"Your...."

"If Shelby's not safe, then Beth is my daughter again," Quinn said. "I don't... I don't even know what my life is going to be from this point out. I don't want to keep her. It wouldn't be fair to either of us. But I know that I _have_ to make sure she's safe, all right? You've been so good with your powers. Please, if you can help at all with getting her back, then _please_ , Kurt. And we need that file to try to make some sense out of all of _this_."

"The file's gone," Kurt said with a shrug. "It was in her office, remember? And the school's on fire. I guess people haven't realized that yet." Everyone had been so caught up in emotional highs that they hadn't followed things to their logical conclusion, and he could see the hope die in Quinn's eyes when he pointed out the obvious.

"Okay," she said, swallowing. "Fine. So maybe it takes longer to learn why Finn got everything and you got nothing. But in the meantime...."

If those mutants in Columbus had been vulnerable, Beth was in an even worse position. If—to use Finn's awful terminology—they were supposed to look out for blind gay mutants from Mexico, Beth needed help even more than them. And, Kurt told himself, it wasn't as if saving one baby meant that he was committing to Sue's ridiculous plan for his entire life. "Let's save Beth," he agreed and Quinn hugged him.

Her voice right against his ear was soft and comforting, and yet her words still made him pull away. "And you should talk to Puck."

"I don't want to!" Kurt said and wished that she hadn't put the delivery room trump card on the table. He felt exhausted, hurt, and drained, but the worst part of everything was that Quinn was absolutely right: it would be better to just clear the air and move on with their lives. As much as he wanted to avoid Puck, Kurt knew that would only mean an endless bunch of helpful lectures from his friends.

"I remember. He used to look at you like no one has ever really looked at me," Quinn said. Her smile was terribly sad. "Because he meant it. You said it yourself, Kurt: you both have someone new. But you should still figure out what happened. We deserve to know as much as we can about our lives."

"I... let's go see if Artie's made any more progress with Shelby," Kurt said, and ignored Quinn's pointed look. Fine. Maybe he'd talk to Puck. Maybe he would. He just wouldn't do it now.

It was darker than when he'd left the living room. The approaching night made things seem tight and claustrophobic. Burt walked up to him, looking concerned. "Hope it's okay I didn't come in after you... that girl said she really needed to talk to you first."

"It was fine," Kurt said. "Don't worry about it. She's allowed to tell me what to do on this one particular topic." Even he could admit that contractions trumped simple heartache. "Have you heard from Coach Sylvester?" He didn't think Sue would let herself be caught in the fire, but worried about whatever thing might have set it.

"She's checked in, she's okay. So have Rachel's dads," Burt said. "There are more fires starting. It sounds like it's pretty dangerous out there."

"And it's our fault," Rachel said quietly. "I'm sorry. I was eavesdropping."

"Close quarters," Burt said with a shrug.

"Us being here is why the school was burned down. Us being here is why there are those other fires." As Rachel stood there, all her typical presence seemed to fall away: the bravado, the utter certainty, the belief in Rachel Berry. Without that confidence she looked very small and fragile. Kurt pulled her against his side and noticed Burt's unspoken approval. "We have to do something to help."

"You staying safe will help people," Burt said. "Okay? Carole's watching from an upstairs window, now, and she's not going to let anything get near the house. She says she's a good shot."

"Is there a pattern?" Kurt asked after a second of thought.

"To what?" Rachel mumbled against him.

"To the fires, where they're starting." 

"I already looked," Artie said. They were apparently in very close quarters indeed, if he'd heard so easily. "It's all kids from school. Beyond that, I don't know." He shrugged and then slumped. "And I can't find any info on Shelby. I can't figure out what's going on with the fires. ...And Quinn just pointed out that the file on us would have burned up, so things suck even more. Whoo hoo."

"I hate this," Puck said. "I'm not supposed to be useless. I'm not supposed to...." He started to punch the couch cushion and just barely caught himself. His fist caught his open palm, instead, and the furniture remained unbroken. "I couldn't do _shit_ when I was on probation, and I felt useless. I could have finally done something good but nope, I just wasn't _allowed._ "

Kurt frowned uncomfortably at the memory of Puck trying to defend him. Finn followed suit. "I hate this," Kurt echoed. Puck looked hurt, and Kurt found himself giving a quick headshake. No, he didn't mean Puck, but no, he shouldn't have bothered to clarify. "I hate having to be locked away for my own protection again," he said and started pacing. 

"We should be out there," Rachel said, staring at the window. "We could stick together. We could take them on if we were together, and we could stop people from getting hurt."

"No," Burt said forcefully.

"We should be doing something," Mercedes said, and Mike and Tina nodded at her.

"I'm trying to come up with the right thing," Finn said, looking completely despondent, "but I can't. I don't know what we should do."

"We should do... something," Brittany said, nodding at him, but she didn't have anything better to offer.

Yes. They should do something. They should be better than what someone had made of them and they should grab for more freedom than what they'd been given. It was more than simple ego: they really had saved lives in Columbus, and if they didn't do something in Lima, more lives were going to end. Because of them, because of their presence that the town hadn't asked for, people were going to die. Against those screaming shadows, anyone in Lima would be as helpless as Beth.

"We can't even see what's going on," Santana grumbled and tried to peer between solid metal blinds. "The news is crap."

"It's almost like a small town isn't set up with a huge media circus ready to launch at a moment's notice," Artie agreed and she sneered at him. But then he sat up, straight and smiling, and said, "I know what to do." Everyone looked up. It sounded like the first bit of hope they'd had since gathering and it felt like a live current running through the group. "I know what to do," Artie repeated in amazement. "I've spent a solid month trying to figure out how to do this."

"Do what?" Burt asked warily.

"Is it all right if I send a camera out into the streets?" Artie asked. "So we can see exactly who's being hurt? All of us would stay right here."

Burt frowned. "Uh, well, yeah, I guess that's okay. What's the plan?"

“I know how to make a robot,” Artie said. “I've been trying to figure this out for weeks, I've been planning, and now I can make a robot. Puck, bring me Finn's TV. I need to gut it for parts.” Finn began to protest. “Do you want to give up an old TV or do you want to save people?”

“I guess I want to save people,” he muttered. "We could use a different TV, though.” Finn hesitated. "Fine. Whatever. Puck, go get my TV," he said, though he didn't meet Puck's eyes. 

Kurt soon realized that it was a blessing to have Artie's creation in front of them as a distraction. Artie occasionally asked for other objects to break down. Fascinated by the effort, Burt always offered whatever was needed. Even Carole agreed that sending out a robot to survey the town would give them valuable information without putting them at risk. So long as they stayed where she could watch, S.H.I.E.L.D. would approve, and Artie worked with confidence.

"Let me help you with that," Burt said when it became difficult for Artie to handle the increasingly large object in front of him. 

"You know how to make robots?" Artie asked, clearly impressed.

"I know how to use a wrench," Burt said, smiling, "and I used to work for Tony Stark."

That put a huge grin on Artie's face, and with an assistant his pace sped. It was strange to see things take shape into a humanoid form, Kurt thought as the room silently watched. Outside, the day dimmed and collapsed entirely into twilight. Kurt wondered whether any more fires were lighting up the night, and whether anyone was hurt. "Do you think they went to our houses?" he asked and everyone jerked to look at him. _I assume everyone's parents left after we came here, but...._

"My house had better not be on fire again," Santana said after that pause, and everyone nodded grimly and returned their attention to Artie and Burt.

That distraction gave Puck a chance to approach Kurt unnoticed. Kurt tensed as Puck slid up to his shoulder, just on the edge of superspeed. "How I treated you here was wrong," Puck said in a low voice, and shuffled his feet when Burt stared at him darkly. "But I remember everything about us in New York and I didn't do a damn thing wrong there."

"Puck—" Kurt began to say, but saw Quinn staring at him pointedly. Rachel and Finn looked wary, but it was Quinn's righteous glare that made the decision for him. If this was when they were talking, then he would talk. "All right. But I am happy here with someone who is not you. I know we were... together, fine, but I don't remember it. I don't remember feeling anything for you. And I don't want to mess up the best parts of what my life is supposed to be because of someone I don't remember caring about."

From the look on Puck's face, Kurt had the impression that it would have hurt less if he'd stabbed Puck with his sword.

"Which shouldn't be a problem," Kurt continued after a horribly awkward few seconds, aware that half the people there were listening in, "since it's not like we still have feelings for each other or are anything more than occasional acquaintances."

"Ouch," Mike immediately said and Kurt wondered what he'd done.

"Something obviously went wrong for Finn to react like he did," Kurt said. Puck's silent, agonized stare was really beginning to freak him out. "So let's just let bygones be bygones, maintain a nice, professional relationship, and save Lima and your daughter. And then we will both return to our significant others, whom we love very much. End of story."

Puck stared at Finn in disbelief, shook his head, and said, "You think it was something bad with _us_ back then? So I really am getting blamed for stuff I didn't even do. Great."

"Hey. He set his boundaries," Burt said, loudly and firmly. "And you'd better respect them."

Puck flinched back, looked between Kurt and Burt, and seemed ready to say something in his defense. Then he held up one hand, laughed bitterly, and stalked away in the direction of the bathroom. "I'm just taking a leak," he said loudly. "Not jerking off."

Though Burt looked disgusted over Puck, much of the group looked disgusted at Kurt. "What did I do?" Kurt asked under their withering stares.

"He was looking at you like I look at Santana," Brittany said.

"Or like Rachel looks at herself in the mirror," Santana added. "Like Finn looks at deep-fried candy bars. Like Sam looks at a lovely lady fish before they swim upstream together."

"Enough!" Burt said and everyone cowed. "Kurt doesn't want to deal with that kid. End of story. Drop it."

"Thanks, Dad," Kurt muttered, but wondered why everyone kept looking at him like he was the bad guy. If the entire group had to stay in his house too much longer, he was going to claim Rachel, Tina, and Mercedes for a private sleepover with a locked door. (Of course, even Tina and Mercedes had been siding with Puck that evening, annoyingly. Maybe he'd just take Rachel.)

Puck stayed in the bathroom for longer than could be explained by anything short of crippling dysentery, but Kurt wasn't about to complain about getting the space he craved. As the robot's underframe molded into something approaching a real person, Kurt began to get a horrible feeling. He saw his apprehension mirrored on everyone's faces. "Artie...."

"Shut up," Artie grumbled. "I know."

"What are you doing?" Finn asked as he stared.

"I, well... think about what I've been dealing with," Artie said, but by that point even Burt was looking at him like there was something deeply, desperately wrong with the boy in front of him. And then they were done.

Everyone boggled at the results of Artie’s handiwork. The robot sat up and waited expectantly for orders. It was incredibly lifelike, from its hair down to its shoes, and even the voice was a perfect match when it asked for input.

“Oh dear god,” Santana said as she stared. “I have never been more afraid of Artie.” She paused. “I’ve never been afraid of him… before this.”

“Well,” Artie said uncertainly, “I guess we’ll test it out.”

* * *

Santana peered at the feed from the robot's eyes and shoved people away when they tried to crowd her view of the monitor. "Check my house and Brit's house first, okay?"

"Excuse me, Santana," Rachel said. "My parents are both agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and it's my life that's somehow been twisted around with Shelby. I want to see if my house is fine. It has to be at the highest risk."

"My house is just a block away from the 'bot," Tina suggested. "It'd be the fastest one to check."

"We have a list of places that burned down," Finn said as he stared at a sheet full of scribbles. Over the course of the night, fires had bloomed in Lima like July fireworks exploding overhead. Such a small town wasn't prepared for the scope of the disaster befalling it, and although they'd recorded the location of fresh fires as new stories were posted, more surely remained. "Maybe we should see if anyone we know, uh... died?"

No one had the heart to argue, and Artie's robot set off at a jog toward the nearest address Finn had jotted down from the news. "Whose house is that?" Quinn asked as they got near. 

Mike typed the address on Finn's sheet into Kurt's laptop. "It's, um... the Carmichael family?" He shrugged, clearly not knowing who that was.

Santana looked up, considered his words, and frowned. "Like Jason Carmichael?"

"Maybe?" Mike said. "Who's Jason Carmichael?"

"He's on the Cheerios," Santana said. Her frown deepened. "He was on Channel Five. He talked about me and Brit."

Everyone exchanged wary glances again as Artie set off for a new location, having noted that blackened Carmichael house lacked a garage and the driveway was empty. With any luck, the Carmichaels were on a fishing trip that week. Puck had finally come out of the bathroom, but even his presence couldn't distract Kurt from the knowledge that people were being chosen based on proximity to them. _It's our fault,_ Kurt thought, and hoped desperately that no one had died.

"Um," Mercedes said. "Guys? If Jason was on the news in a story about us, and he got targeted...."

"Oh my god," Kurt said, gulping in air as her words struck. "Dad, Dad, I need the phone, Blaine needs to come here."

"I need a phone, too!" Mercedes said. "The government paid to put his family up in a Residence Inn, but it's just a hotel, it's not safe—"

"We should go out there," Puck said. "Seriously, what's stopping us? I can break down that door. And it's bullshit that we're waiting in here, being useless, if people are getting hurt." He shot Kurt a dirty look. "'Cause believe it or not, I can be a good guy now and then."

"Whoa!" Artie cried, cutting off the growing argument. "Something just knocked over the 'bot. Whoa. Okay. Think we might have found the, uh, Rifts?"

"Rifts," Rachel confirmed tightly. "We should tell Ms. Sylvester." Nodding, Burt hurried off to do just that.

Their first-person camera view stood, only to be knocked over again. Heavy sounds of metal on pavement screeched through the speakers. Artie grimaced and moved the eyes as far as they'd rotate, and then nodded. "That house has a security camera," he muttered and his fingers flew over the keyboard. "I'm going to hack into it. At least we can see what's going on without getting slapped around."

"Still wish we'd gone out there?" Tina asked Puck, but he remained unafraid.

_Finn?_ Kurt thought at him. Even with the distraction of what filled Artie's monitor, Finn looked right over to Kurt. For once, he was glad for how easy it was for Finn to read his mind. _Tell Dad to bring the phones so we can call Blaine, Sam, and Lauren._ He waited for the nod and continued after a pause. _I need to know. What happened with Puck, if everyone was so convinced he was good and you're convinced he was bad?_

Finn shrugged. _I don't really remember, I just know it was awful._

_Didn't you read his mind? He's obviously been thinking about it._

Hangdog, Finn thought, _I'm not allowed to just read minds any more._

Oh, of course, _now_ he had to develop a telepathic conscience, after he'd mindwiped Kurt for the hell of it. After cutting off their conversation, Kurt tapped his feet nervously against the floor and waited for the phones. Blaine was further away than some of these addresses, he told himself. Sue had been there multiple times. If the Rifts had been watching Lima at all, the Andersons' house shouldn't look very appealing. 

"I hate this," Quinn said. "Just watching. Waiting. I really do want to be out there."

"Give it some time," Artie said as he coaxed his robot back to a standing position. "There. See? That... thing down the road from the 'bot isn't knocking it over any more, and so now we can go look closer." The robot set into motion, moving unevenly thanks to its injuries, and after a few complaints over the jerky progress Artie returned to the third-person view from the security camera. 

"What is that?" Puck asked as he frowned at the shadowy figure standing in front of the burning house. The fire flared, casting it in stark silhouette, and a large chunk of the roof collapsed. Everyone flinched at the growing damage against someone who'd had the simple misfortune to know them.

Artie’s custom-built robot walked bravely toward the invader. Its hair was a soft puff against the summer breeze. Its voice was a thin, irritating whine when it called out.

The invader turned to greet the perfect replica of Jacob Ben Israel as it approached. “Hey there,” Jacob said as it thrust its hip to one side. It licked its lips, stuck a finger in its mouth, and then trailed that finger in a line between its shirt-clad nipples. “Looking for a good time?”

Everyone at the house turned and boggled at Artie. Artie ignored them all to stare sadly at the monitor. “I wanted to make sex robots,” he said. “And this. _This_ is what I came up with. A month of planning, and I had to have Jacob's stupid website in my head when I was making it. And Jacob's stupid face."

"And once again I'm scared of Artie," Santana said. "So what is that thing?"

It was difficult to make out a face in the uneven light. Only Rachel, with her powers of concentration, seemed able to focus on the tiny flashes of illumination the blaze gave and form them into a complete picture. She soon gasped. "It's Shelby."

"But it's a shadowy... thing," Artie said.

"It's also Shelby," Rachel said, and pointed as the shadows receded into her body.

Shelby stared at the Jacob robot, confused. When she saw something just below his eyeline, though, a smile spread. Everyone looked uncertainly at each other.

"It's on the other side from the security camera," Artie muttered, "but I can see the diagnostics. Part of its face got ripped off. She can see he's a robot."

"Who do you belong to?" Shelby asked. They jumped at the sound of her voice. "S.H.I.E.L.D., probably. Do you know where the kids are, little creepy robot? Because I kind of need to talk to them."

Artie only started typing an answer when Santana elbowed him. "What are you doing here?" appeared on screen, and followed a few seconds later in Jacob's thin voice.

"Trying to fix a little problem," Shelby said with a shrug. "S.H.I.E.L.D., if you're watching, I'm sorry for all the trouble. But I've gotta do what I've gotta do. And kids, if this is your robot... I wish this wasn't happening." Her sincerity sounded almost obscene, given its context. "I mean, I even wished you good luck when this kid talked to me," she said with a gesture toward the Jacob 'bot.

"Ugh," Rachel said after a second. "She did. She wished us good luck! She knew she was going to do this?"

"I'm trying to make this up to you," Shelby said and sounded genuinely apologetic.

"What the hell is going on?" Burt muttered. Everyone nodded in agreement. 

There was an explosion of light, either from the fire or Shelby herself, and everyone shied away from the monitor. Artie struggled to get his feed back, but couldn't bring up the 'bot and had to resort to the security camera. He panned around until he found his robot lying prone on the street, and sighed. "So much for that."

"Artie," Rachel said as she looked at the crumpled figure. "How real did you make your robot?"

"Pretty real," Artie said. "Why?"

"Because... is that oil?" Rachel asked and pointed to a thin gleaming sliver on the street. Liquid was spilling from the 'bot. It could look like oil, Kurt agreed, but it could also look like....

"Blood," Puck said. "That's not oil, it's blood. Dude, what is with your creepy robot?"

"I didn't give my robot any blood," Artie said, paling, and turned the security camera back and forth. There on the road, thrown by the blast of light, was Artie's robot: one leg torn off, circuits sparking, and a pool of oil spreading below its damaged torso. He turned the camera back to the first figure. The puddle there was thicker, and didn't gleam in the firelight.

"I think I know whose house this is," Finn whispered, sounding like he might vomit.

Kurt stared at Jacob Ben Israel's corpse as Shelby nudged it with her boot-clad toe. "I really am sorry, guys," she said, looking around for whatever camera they might be using. "But here's a little apology in the meantime."

When her foot moved again, she kicked Jacob's body hard enough to roll it.

"The sooner I find you," she said, "the sooner I'll stop having to ask people where you are." Then she became shadows again, and vanished into the camouflage of the late hour.

"You're not going outside," Burt instantly said.

"We have to find Beth," Quinn whispered as she stared at the screen.

Although most people froze, that was when Puck ripped off the front door.


	22. I Don't Want to Die

Puck knew he wasn't good at many things. 

Maybe that was why he got along with Rachel, or was at least part of it. He understood focusing on what he did well. Rachel was super-amazing at performing, and knew it. But her baking was a lot worse than she thought it was. Her acting sometimes took major stumbles. Her big plans could backfire. In the end, though, she knew it was her voice that would open up the world for her. She focused. That was fine.

Some of them did seem to have their fingers equally in everything. That was something Puck simply couldn't understand, because it wasn't like those skills overlapped. He didn't _get_ how Mike could be such a killer dancer and great player and do his quiz team and still be on the honor roll. How Quinn aced all her classes and did all her church activities and stayed as captain under Sue Sylvester. How Kurt was also on the 'hey look I actually got some As' squad, could sew his own outfit for Prom, put on his own snow tires, and still won football games so easily that he'd seemed bored at practice. 

Nope: Puck knew about staying focused. Everything he had layered neatly on top of each other. He was a good athlete. He looked fantastic. Give him a guitar and he was a sex god on vocals. It all hung together under one big flashing sign: _look at this guy, you should have sex with him._

Then, all of that seemed about as important to him as football had to Kurt.

There was exactly one other thing Puck felt good at. It almost took him by surprise, but then he'd cultivated it like those little plants in fourth grade science class. That skill was simple but valuable: once Puck actually started caring about someone, he was really good at protecting them.

He might not be good at many things, but on that night he needed to be perfect at that.

His feet pounded down the sidewalk. At top speed, the blaring alarm at the Hudson-Hummels' vanished from hearing within seconds. Only Mike had a chance of catching Puck, and Mike would probably aim straight toward Shelby if someone said to try. But Puck wasn't heading for Shelby. Not yet. She was at Jacob's house and Puck had no idea where Jacob Ben Israel lived.

Where... where Jacob had lived.

Puck tripped, hit a mailbox so hard that it ripped free of the concrete, and started running again after he brushed gravel out of his skin. That'd leave a mark.

One more corner to go, and then he was at his target. Puck pulled himself up the brickwork without hesitation. He had to carve out fingerholds as he went, and when he tapped the window it cracked. Lauren shoved it open, stared at the spiderwebbing lines, and then frowned at him. "You need to leave," Puck said when she opened her mouth to protest.

"Why are you hanging off my house?" she asked pointedly. "It's crazy out there. Have you seen the news?"

If there was one person in the world who never needed to be rescued, it was Lauren Zizes. That day had struck Puck with a succession of haymakers: he'd been in love with Kurt! Finn was trying to fuck Puck over! Creepy aliens were about to kill them! Beth might be in danger! Now Beth was definitely in danger, because Shelby was evil! He'd been left reeling, unable to spare much thought or energy to anything but addressing the most immediate problem of the moment. 

Lauren, though, could take care of herself. She could take care of herself like a _boss._ Every other stupid thing in his life had turned upside down, but at least he could trust in Lauren. He hadn't needed to worry about her... until now. "Jacob is dead," Puck said.

She stared back, and was very quiet when she spoke. "Jacob Ben Israel?"

Jacob and Lauren might not have been friends, but they'd been in clubs together. They'd talked. He was someone she knew, and now he was gone. Puck nodded once. "Shelby is evil. She went to his house and killed him."

Her eyes widened. She sounded too deep in shock to have really processed Jacob's death, but it would come. "The woman who adopted... what do you need me to do?" When Puck shook his head, she asked, "Come on, I want to help, what can I do?"

"Go," Puck said firmly. "If you don't run, she'll kill you. She's grabbing people who were on the news, and you were."

Lauren frowned and the fire in her eyes flickered with uncertainty. "I don't run," she said, but for the first time there was some question behind it.

He leaned forward and kissed her. He had to trust that she would take care of herself again, because now he had to focus on Beth. He couldn't worry that Lauren might get hurt. He couldn't worry that he might die at the hands of creepy aliens. He couldn't think about New York and Kurt. He had to focus. He was good when he focused. "If you care about me at all, you won't make me look at your body like I just looked at Jacob's," Puck said, even though he knew it was a low blow. "You can handle yourself better than anyone, and I need you to do that. Take your parents, drive out of Lima, and just _run._ I need to go take care of Beth now."

"Okay," Lauren said after a long beat. "I'll call the guys and I'll run." The word sounded strange coming from her. "Go save Beth."

Secure in the knowledge that Lauren would once again take care of herself, Puck threw himself off the side of the house and landed heavily on the grass. He hit with a grunt and was painfully reminded that he didn't have as much natural armor as he might like. After turning toward the street, he swore and promptly climbed the bricks again. "Before you go," Puck said, "look up Jacob's address."

* * *

That was the second time Rachel had heard Finn's house screech at her, which was two times too many. It was piercing. As Burt fumbled to turn it off, made trickier by the ruined door that kept overriding his commands, she pushed him aside and sent one note deep into the wiring. Plastic exploded on the wall and the shell of the control panel fell in shards to the floor.

Burt stared at Rachel in disbelief. She pointed meekly to the ceiling when the noise cut off, where she thought a speaker might be. "I stopped the alarm."

"No, I stopped the alarm," Artie said and held up his laptop.

"Oh."

A figure raced in and Rachel nearly attacked it before recognition hit. "I was patrolling nearby," Sue said as she filled the door with her oddly comforting presence. "I got the notification. What happened?" Rachel could see that the safety of her gun was off. Sue had run in ready to kill whatever had broken through.

Carole hurried downstairs, rifle in hand, and looked to Burt for an explanation. He hissed out a short breath. "Puck ripped off the door and ran to face down that woman who adopted his and Quinn's kid."

"She's here?" Sue asked and sounded genuinely startled. "And why didn't you stop him?"

Burt didn't bother explaining why he hadn't personally faced down a superpowered strongman, and Sue turned to the remaining kids. "She's one of those Rift things," Quinn said. 

"We saw it ooze in and out of her, kind of," Santana added.

About to bark orders, Sue broke off when she saw Kurt and Mercedes frantically dialing phones they'd dug out of storage. "Hey!" she said instead, and snatched the phone out of Kurt's hand. "No phones." Her next movement took care of Mercedes.

"But we have to warn Sam and everyone to run!" Mercedes said, and started grabbing for the receiver as Kurt slipped into invisibility.

Sue's hand darted out and smacked the blank air. Kurt instantly became visible again, and he clutched one hand to the side of his head. "Ow!"

"No."

"You can't just hit me!"

"I am no longer employed at that burned-down school, and so I am no longer serving in an educational capacity over you." Her hand darted out to smack the other side of his skull, but he blocked it before she made contact. Sue grinned darkly. "Just remember that I'm always right and we won't need to have this argument." She lifted her own phone and pushed one button, then shoved it back into her belt. "And now they're warned. Don't worry; they're not her targets. Rifts don't care about anything that doesn't give them energy, and a typical human is useless."

"But she killed Jacob," Brittany said. Her voice wavered. "She was trying to find us and she killed him. We saw it."

"It's a long story. They were watching with a robot," Burt tiredly explained when Sue rounded on him.

"You are an incompetent babysitter," she said. "So, she was just at Jacob Ben Israel's? Then that's where Puckerman is headed."

"I don't know if you'll be able to subdue him, Sue," Carole warned. "He might have snapped."

"I can take down one metahuman," Sue said dismissively. "Especially if he has to get close to hit me. And one possessed woman will just be a gnat until I'm done taking care of Puckerman."

"But Shelby had some sort of weird attack," Finn said. "There was this big whoosh and our robot got thrown back. Its leg was ripped off. She looked pretty strong."

That sent uncertainty into Sue's eyes, and that was unacceptable. Sue Sylvester had to know what to do at any given second, because all of them certainly didn't. "Where are my dads?" Rachel suggested.

"Clearing out the other parents," Sue said tightly. "Not available." Though everyone seemed relieved as a threat they hadn't even thought of was addressed, Sue looked more concerned by the second. "Damn. Carole, can you still shoot straight?"

Her eyes widened and she swallowed. "I wasn't exactly a top marksman when I was active," Carole said. "And it's been years."

Santana frowned and gestured at Carole's rifle. "Wait, weren't you our lookout upstairs?"

She shrugged helplessly. "Well, I was going to try my best."

"Can't you _and_ Puck handle Shelby?" Mercedes asked. "He's gonna want to take her down, too. How tough can she be?"

"I have to get Puckerman away from Corcoran if she's a serious threat to the two of us," Sue said. "I don't know how they're planning on tapping you kids for energy, but it could be like a bomb going off if she tries. Maybe they can do it right here, maybe not. And he's not going to listen to reason, especially if he has snapped. I'm guessing his temper right now could make Russell Crowe look as milquetoast as Abrams."

"Hey," Artie said.

"Maybe Kurt could try?" Tina said, shrugging and sounding very apologetic.

"You and I are going to have _words_ later," Kurt said, glowering, but then turned back to Sue. "I... fine. I doubt Puck has any idea where Jacob's house is, but he runs quickly. He might stumble on Shelby soon, or she might find him. Let's go."

"You're all coming," Sue said. "Because I don't want her to find this house while I'm hunting for her, not with a busted-down door and an agent who can't even shoot straight."

"I was trained in logistics and I'm inactive!" Carole snapped. Burt was very quiet and his jaw kept clenching. His hands twitched to the side like he wanted to grab for Kurt.

"Look, this is safer. So long as they all stay together, there's no chance she can overpower them and pick off just one," Sue told Burt and Carole as she guided all the kids toward the garage. Rachel felt completely useless as she was herded along. Her powers had only destroyed an alarm panel, and any group leadership she had was completely superseded by Sue's. "You two, stay here and make sure nothing sneaks in while we're away. We might need to come back to it as a base and I don't want any unpleasant surprises.

"If I had my way, you'd all have individual bodyguards," Sue continued as she shoved everyone but Artie toward the largest vehicle—Kurt's—and helped Artie into the front seat of her own car. "But we make do with what we can. Shade, give Swift your keys. He's the most poorly equipped to face them and the rest of you might need to be ready to attack."

The use of their code names made everything sound far more official and serious, Rachel thought as Kurt mechanically handed over his keys. They all climbed into the car, though not all of them had seat belts, and looked nervously at each other as Mike started the engine.

From the way that Finn stared at Burt and Carole, he was probably saying good-bye for him and Kurt. A chill ran through Rachel and she looked the other way. She hadn't said good-bye to her dads. Nothing more than a quick wave, anyway, and that hardly sufficed. Not when they were fighting for their lives and trying to stop Puck from being carried off to do... whatever it was that Shelby was planning.

"I didn't say good-bye," Kurt said softly and Rachel looked back that way.

"You're still close enough that Finn could—"

"Not to them, he said it for both of us." Kurt swallowed. "I was at Blaine's earlier and I didn't say good-bye when I left. I didn't get the chance."

"He'll be fine," Rachel said after a beat and laid her hand on his. "We're the ones in danger."

"I picked him, you know," Kurt said. Rachel noticed others listening in, but they had the decency to keep whispering among themselves rather than intrude. "I don't care whether Puck said I loved him or not. Whatever happened ended, and it's in the past. I'm happy. Blaine's a better person. I picked him."

"All right," Rachel said carefully. It sounded like he was spoiling for an argument that she didn't want to make.

"Everyone tried to make me feel guilty," he added, voice tight as piano wires, "and they had no right."

She could remember flashes of the two of them together, set against a New York backdrop. They'd watched each other during the group's first attempts at superheroics, they'd curled up in a corner during lunch breaks at their government school, they'd argued with Finn and Rachel about which restaurants to visit and movies to see. "If they remember you like I do," Rachel said carefully, as Kurt clearly had a hair trigger at the moment, "then you looked very... well, it _was_ right in front of all of us, not off alone at some other school. And it was for longer than you've been with... and they just know Noah better...."

Kurt's look of betrayal made her heart ache. "I'm just trying to explain why people might have pushed you," Rachel said softly. "I don't think you have to pick him and I know how much it hurts to be a target. Not everyone does. Not like us. Not with that much unrelenting focus."

After a beat, his hand relaxed under hers and Kurt nodded slowly. "Thank you," he said and really sounded to mean it. "Rachel?" he asked. "Do you know why Finn thinks Puck was bad for me?"

Aware that Finn was watching them, his dark eyes glittering under passing streetlights, Rachel hesitated before speaking the truth. "I have no idea. You seemed wonderful together." Neither Kurt nor Finn said anything to that and Rachel was reminded of how Kurt described Noah Puckerman as being very good at covering his worst behavior. She shouldn't speculate. Maybe he had hurt Kurt and she'd just never seen.

Sue's voice crackled and Rachel nearly lunged off her seat. She hadn't even noticed Sue clipping one of Artie's communicators to her shirt. "Be ready to follow my lead, Swift. Brake when I brake. Park behind me. And stay together, kids. Come near Envision the second you're out."

"All right," Rachel said, wishing her voice sounded stronger. "We will most certainly do that."

"She's good," Santana said in a clear attempt to reassure herself. "Totally batshit. But she's good." Brittany nodded and shivered.

"She's good," Kurt agreed and stared out the windows.

"So what's the plan of attack?" Quinn asked. "If we need to make one?"

Realizing that Quinn was looking at her, and that she was still being seen in the leadership role she'd automatically assumed, Rachel took a deep breath. "Kurt... Shade said that we need to attack the Rifts from a distance. We all know our capabilities and whether that's us or not. If you don't have any distance attacks, be ready for a second line of defense in case something gets through." She caught Mercedes' eye and the girl nodded. If Rifts got near them, or if Shelby tried to use her attack again, Mercedes might once again be their last, best line of defense.

"What about things that aren't... things, though? Shelby, I mean. What should we do when we see her?" Tina asked. 

"She kept talking about energy," Kurt said distantly. "They want it. We shouldn't give them any."

"Is fire energy?" Santana asked and frowned at her hand. "Should I not throw my fireballs at them? Damn. I wish I had my costume. I can't go full-body fire, I like this shirt."

Rachel had run through their distance attacks and easily come up with the list of potential fighters: herself, Quinn, Santana, and Finn. Brittany, possibly, if she could get her powers under control. Finn's telekinesis landed like a punch, not an energy bolt, but as for the rest of them.... "Is sound energy? Does that count?" Rachel asked. It was difficult not to bite her nails. They were fighting for their lives and they weren't even sure how to defend themselves.

"I can kind of remember fighting them before," Mike said as he focused intently on following Sue's taillights. "San... Wildfire, you seemed to hurt them, so long as you hit hard."

Kurt nodded slowly. "Sue said that it takes a lot of effort for the Rifts to do things here with physical bodies. If you really damage them, instead of just winging them, you're probably hurting more than any benefit they'd get from the energy." That satisfied Santana and her fingertips began to glow like embers.

"Finn?" Rachel asked. Even though their earlier argument hadn't resolved, they needed to put on a good face for the group. "Do you have any leadership opinions?"

"No," he said and didn't look away from the window. "I just shouldn't do things for a while. Or have ideas."

Fantastic. "Mercedes?" Rachel asked. "Are you be ready?"

"Yep," Mercedes said tightly. "I'm ready. I don't want to be doing this, but I'm ready."

"If we take care of this now," Kurt said to Mercedes, "then we'll stop them before they hurt anyone else." It was perfectly clear who he meant by that: Blaine and Sam, with Lauren as a bonus. She smiled weakly and nodded at the notion of protecting both of their very human boyfriends from harm, and then extended her knuckles for bumping. He obliged.

His words echoed in Rachel's head. Before they hurt anyone else. Anyone _else_. "Jacob is dead," Rachel whispered. "He did this because I asked him to." 

It was her fault. All her fault. The powers she'd been given weren't to make her famous, no: they were to stop even one more person from dying when she could have prevented it.

"Intent," Sue's voice said and Finn straightened in his seat. "I don't know if this will work, but see if you can do telepathic scans for Champion as we're driving. Maybe you can sense him."

"Is that an order?" Finn asked warily.

"Yes."

He looked relieved at being commanded by Sue, oddly enough, and nodded. "Okay. I'll do what I can."

They drove for a block in silence. They had to be almost to Jacob's, Rachel thought; the town wasn't that big. Would she have to see him? His corpse? _Blood trickled across the pavement, dark and slow under the streetlights._ Sweat beaded her forehead. She was suddenly unsure whether she could hold down what food was in her stomach.

"I've got him," Finn said suddenly and everyone turned to him. After one dangerous second, the surprise steadied Rachel's nausea instead of pushing it to its unpleasant conclusion. Finn leaned over to Rachel's communicator and repeated, "Miss, uh, Sue, I've got him."

"Direct us there," Sue's voice said.

Though Finn gestured loosely ahead with vague directions to match, he interrupted himself to address their driver. "You're going to have to speed up," he told Mike. "He's running."

Kurt didn't complain when his car slipped into a higher gear on the narrow residential streets. What was happening was far too real for that, and Jacob was already dead and bled dry. Rachel's stomach started churning again and the back of her mouth tasted sour. Soon they would find Shelby. She would find out who the woman was, and then they'd find out what she was.

And with any luck, the world wouldn't end.

* * *

_Who was Shelby?_ Puck asked himself that yet again as he ran. He refused to believe that she'd killed Beth. She must have had some reason for taking his daughter, and that reason probably still existed. Well, Shelby was just one person, creepy shadows or not, and he could lift a car above his head. He'd win, capture her, and demand the truth.

Everything would work out, he thought with each heavy footfall. Shelby wouldn't go after his mom and Sarah; they'd never been on the news. Lauren was leaving town. Kurt was... Kurt was with everyone else, and besides, Puck wasn't thinking about Kurt. Kurt had made his decision. He'd gone for Blaine. They were both happy with someone else. That was for the best. Lauren didn't blame Puck for things he'd never done, or treat him like he could be summed up by his lowest point. Lauren was chill. She didn't make scenes.

This was all for the best. Puck was even glad that he'd run off on his own. He was a lone wolf. He didn't take orders well. Yeah.

A telepathic tickle at his mind made Puck stop and swat at the side of his head like he was brushing away a mosquito. _Fuck off, Hudson._

All right, sometimes backup could be a good thing. Puck could admit that much after his own well-timed arrival had saved lives in Columbus. He just didn't want to have _Finn_ in his mind after he'd wiped away all he'd done for Kurt, and made Puck sound like he'd never been any better than his first days in Lima. Puck didn't need to be with Kurt from that point on out, but the two of them had been something good. Finn had stomped on the past with his big stupid elephant feet, and it wasn't like Puck had all that many things in his life that he'd been truly proud of. No, he didn't want Finn Hudson in his mind.

_But I'd really like to talk to you,_ Shelby thought deep into him.

Now that, he hadn't expected. Puck swallowed, glanced over his shoulder, and wondered which way she was coming from. The night was achingly still around him, interrupted only by the distant sounds of barking dogs and fire engines. He heard an occasional scream, but it was nowhere close. 

Okay. Shelby was a telepath, too. She wasn't just a creepy shadow host thing. She had her own powers. She'd sent out a flash of light, killed Jacob and destroyed a robot, and now she was a telepath. And Puck was completely on his own.

He swallowed. Fists clenched. After one quick round of debating between fight or flight, he cleared his mind and thought, _Uh, Finn?_

* * *

"I can hear him again," Finn said in the car as they sped in an increasingly specific search pattern through the town. "Puck, I mean."

"Which way?" crackled Sue's voice. 

"Left at the next turn, I think," Finn said.

"You're not sure? I thought you were getting better with your powers," Kurt said. "Wiping my brain seems pretty high-level."

Okay, so even if Kurt was happy not to remember any love toward Puck, he was still mad. Finn wouldn't need telepathy to know that, and he didn't question the conflicting tones in Kurt's voice. By that point Finn had become used to how people could simultaneously hold seven different arguments in their heads at once. Really, it was more notable when thoughts made perfect sense; people were naturally wiggly and confusing. "Well, I can see your brain like no one else's," Finn said. "Because of, well, you know. Twins. And I'm really sorry for what I did."

Although Finn tried not to read anyone's mind on purpose, being around Kurt was like having a neighbor with thin walls. He could always hear the television at a low buzz, and knew if someone was angry or laughing in the next room over. And so he knew that Kurt wasn't worried about himself, despite the undercurrent of anger over Finn's actions. He was barely letting himself think about the past, whether that morning or two years prior. At that second he was worried about people in danger and was still in shock over Jacob, and that was all the room he had to spare.

"Which way?"

Finn tried to focus again when the communicator crackled. "Uh. Round this next corner and... he's close, he might be on that block."

"On it," Sue said and her taillights sped forward. Her small, unremarkable car took the corner like no vehicle should have managed, and Finn wondered what kind of top technology was masked under that outdated exterior.

"So we can kill Shelby, right?" Santana asked. 

"We need to question her," Rachel said mechanically. "We have to know how she was able to just slip into our lives like that."

"You mean into your life," Santana said. "I would rather just go for a boom, headshot before she turns us into another hors d'oeuvre like the Kosher Kebab."

"Jacob is dead, Santana," Brittany said, harshly enough that everyone turned to her in surprise. "He's seriously, actually dead. Don't joke about him like that."

Santana swallowed. "I know. If I'm joking about him, then I'm not...." Trailing off said more than words ever could, and everyone left her alone as Mike slowed down enough to take the corner at a safe speed. They still felt almost ready to tip and Finn's hand fumbled for the door handle. In the crowded car, deep inside his distractions, he managed to clutch Rachel's wrist instead. Her eyes glistened.

"It's my fault," she whispered.

"It's Shelby's fault."

Her voice was raw. "I asked Jacob to do the web site. I started the kissing that got Sam, Lauren, and Blaine exposed. I pushed everyone into being heroes in the first place. And I was how Shelby ever got close to us. It's my fault."

When Rachel was stubborn about something, there was no changing her mind. He couldn't possibly convince her that Jacob's death wasn't her fault, not that night. "Okay, then make up for it," Finn said instead as the Navigator began to brake. As the tires stopped screeching and they came to a stop behind Sue's parked car, determination settled behind Rachel's eyes. She did always do better when she had a goal to reach.

"Come on, everyone," she said fiercely and reached up to adjust the mask she wasn't wearing. "We have people to save."

"Including us," Mercedes said.

"Let's hope so," Mike said and threw off his seatbelt.

They leapt out of the Navigator, ready to join Sue in her fight. The crack of her gun greeted them. A bullet of pure light caught Shelby in the shoulder and the woman spun, staggered, and fell to the empty street.

"Oh," Brittany said as their impromptu group pose, where fists hung ready and powers sparked, looked suddenly unnecessary.

"That was awesome," Artie said over Rachel's communicator. "I'm glad she's on our side."

"Good timing," Puck said as he stared at the sight before him. Even in the darkness, he looked pale. "Really really good timing. Uh. Shelby's a telepath."

Sue glanced at him. "What? That's news to me. Although maybe it explains how she slithered into your lives without anyone noticing."

That _would_ explain it, and telepathy hadn't made a strong recent showing for good behavior. With a frown, Finn pressed against Shelby's mind to measure her strength and staggered back, gagging. The vile presence inside her couldn't have been prepared for, even if he'd expected it. It flooded her entire being like an oil spill. "Something's inside her," he managed as Mike helped him to stand straight. "One of those things, it has to be."

"Thanks for the secondary confirmation," Sue said, and strode toward Shelby's prone form with her finger on the trigger.

"She only has one more shot in that cartridge," Kurt said quietly. "Everyone, be ready."

"Sue should just shoot her in the head, then," Santana said. "I'm telling you. Boom. Headshot."

Laughter, low and raw and awful, gurgled in Shelby's throat. "They're still going to win."

Sue stood over her and, very calmly, leveled her gun between Shelby's eyes. "Who do you work for? That wound I gave you isn't close to lethal. We can take you in and forcibly question you before you're executed, or you can give me the information I want and I shoot you right here in the street."

"'Forcibly question,'" Tina repeated. "Nice euphemism."

"Kill me either way? Why should I work with you, then?" Shelby asked, her breath coming in short pants as her blood spilled.

"You are working for extradimensional aliens dedicated to the extinction of this planet. I'm betting they're not the best bosses. If I kill you quickly," Sue said, "it gives them less chance to steal you back and take revenge in their own _special_ way."

This wasn't the Sue Sylvester they knew from the halls of William McKinley, and yet it was. It was her drive distilled, without any of the pop culture references and egotism. Anyone could see what made the woman a top agent among top agents. So could Shelby, clearly, and she was silent for a few long beats as she contemplated the most appealing way to die. 

It was strange seeing Shelby that near, and being reminded of how closely she resembled Rachel. Finn had forgotten how much after a year away. The similarity seemed like a crazy coincidence, true, but their lives had been built on crazy coincidences falling neatly together. When Shelby began to speak, Finn leaned forward to see how this would turn out.

"I worked with their parents," Shelby said, only able to get out a handful of words at a time. "In New York. Not for long, they'd just transferred in. I'd been doing other experiments before that. Gave myself powers. Oops. Wasn't in the plan." Despite Sue saying that her shoulder wound wasn't lethal, Shelby did sound close to death. Finn found himself taking a few steps closer, along with the rest of the group.

"Would've had to do agent work if they knew. They make telepaths be agents. Not scientists. And I wanted to research." Shelby closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. Sue's gun remained rock-steady above her. "New people transferred in. The kids' families. Then a few days later... attack."

Finn considered reading her thoughts to see what she'd known of their parents; this had to be one of those times when it was an acceptable risk. Then he remembered the oil slick over her mind, shuddered, and kept his thoughts to himself. He didn't want to touch that thing again.

"Shadows," Shelby said. "They wanted something. They started killing everyone. So... so much fear. Blood."

When someone found Finn's hand and squeezed it, Finn took a few seconds to look down and realize Mercedes was the one who'd randomly grabbed him. Many other hands clasped as the group took another collective step toward Shelby. At some point Puck had migrated close to them, and they'd all nearly come up even with Artie in Sue's car. After watching Jacob's broken body on a tiny laptop feed, seeing a real dying body in front of them was a horrifying repeat demonstration. It was awful, and compelling.

"They could hear me. My thoughts. So I begged. I didn't want to die." Shelby laughed like she was choking. "I don't want to die."

"How'd you end up working with them?" Sue asked. Her voice held no sympathy.

"If I let one inside me. I'd live. It's hard for them to come here. Crossing each time. Takes energy. They wanted an anchor. It's inside me." She sounded just as sickened as Finn had felt when he touched the Rift. It wasn't just him being squeamish, then. He wondered how Shelby could deal with one of those things inside of her without screaming or clawing at her own face. "I cut off some hair. Carved off some skin. Burnt it. Made it look like I was ash. From an attack. S.H.I.E.L.D. counted me dead."

"You've been assisting a hostile alien race attempting to destroy the majority or totality of humanity," Sue recited crisply. "You might not have been a full agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., but you were an employee and thus required to lay down your life to prevent such a situation." Her gun hand moved slightly. "That's all the information I need."

"Wait!" Quinn shouted and ran forward. Shelby's shallow breaths panted as she turned to look at her. "Where's Beth?"

"You want to know... Beth," Shelby said. Her eyes rolled to the side as Puck advanced, as well. 

After that interruption of her quick justice, Sue's annoyance faded into a drive to discover the truth of all that Shelby had done. Her knuckles whitened where she held her gun, but her grip remained steady. "Fine. If you knew who your coworkers' kids were, then why'd it take you so long to find them here? Why'd you leave when you did come? And why'd you take the girl?"

"Didn't know their names," Shelby said. "Just worked with... for a few days. Didn't hear any names. And I'm not... not a people person."

Finn snorted. Yeah, it seemed unlikely that Shelby Corcoran would have met a crowd of new people and promptly started asking to see pictures of all their kids.

"It was hard to find here. Still wasn't sure when I came. Kept watching for anything. But every time I saw. Saw. Something strange." Shelby swallowed. "Corrected itself. Couldn't be sure. They wanted results. I thought I was right. Was sure. Convinced them I should adopt. Beth. Just in case." Her breath wheezed. "Stuck around a little longer. No good. Gave up. But couldn't give her back."

Puck lunged to wrap one hand firmly around Shelby's neck. He wasn't squeezing, not yet. "Tell us where she is, now. And you'd better hope she's still safe."

"Step back!" Sue snapped as Shelby smiled.

Another blast of light rocked out of Shelby, and Sue flew backward. The shockwave hit Finn's group hard, collapsing them into a tangled pile of bodies and pain. Sue's small car rocked. Even aching and surrounded by everyone else's minds, Finn felt Artie's stab of panic like his own until Sue's car settled safely back on four wheels.

When the light faded, Shelby was standing with her hand around Puck's throat. Her fingernails dug in deeply enough to draw blood, but he didn't move. His fingers didn't even twitch. "God, you're idiots," she laughed merrily. "Sure, keep coming closer to the monologuing villain who just talked about playing dead." With an apologetic look at Rachel, Shelby added, "I'm sorry. I do know I'm the bad guy, here. I just... I couldn't die. I had to do whatever I could to stay alive. I did try to make it up to you."

"What?" Rachel gasped. 

"I know you kids hate that school, so I burned it down first thing. And everyone I _asked_ about where you might be? Well, I knew they weren't exactly your favorite people. Between kids gloating on the news, a yearbook I grabbed, and what I saw when I was, okay, stalking you...." Shelby shrugged. "So: you're welcome." Sue warily rose to her feet, but Shelby clucked her tongue and shook her head when Sue adjusted her gun. "Stay back," Shelby said. "He's not actually choking. Yet. But wow, this guy is easy to control. He's _screaming_ inside and he can't even move." When everyone backed up and gave her the space she wanted, Shelby explained, "These things need energy like we need oxygen. They're almost out. Their universe is old. They don't want to die, either."

"They're trying to kill us all in the process," Tina said.

"You gotta do what you gotta do."

"You took my daughter," Quinn snapped.

"She was an easier mark than any of you," Shelby said, like that excused her actions.

_Finn. Do something to distract her._

Finn jolted as he heard a voice ring inside his head. That close, it must be easy for Rachel to project her thoughts into his mind. He didn't bother responding beyond a flick of his fingers, knowing Shelby might be listening. To cover their hasty plan, he tried to think about anything else. Football. Puppies. Kurt and Kirk. Naked. Sexy naked Star Trek dreams. _Dammit. Stupid brain._ He tried listening to Puck's mind instead, but it held some of the deepest, most primal fear he'd ever encountered and Finn backed away quickly. Maybe he could have broken Shelby's control over Puck while he was in there, but he had no idea how. She was clearly stronger than him, or at least more experienced.

"Beth's alive," Shelby said almost casually. "She'll at least be able to prime things, but I don't know how much she can fuel it beyond that. I've measured potential in her. But I really need one of you guys to be on the safe side, since she doesn't have specific powers yet."

_Her nose is bleeding._

Finn almost nodded at Kurt's observation of Shelby pushing herself a bit too far. _No, no, don't let her see._ He had to cover what he was doing. Think of the Enterprise. _Lens flares. Lens flares lens flares lens flares._

"Don't," Shelby sing-songed as Sue slowly moved to a better position. "I'll kill him." She inched backward and Puck moved with her, guided by her powers. With her confidence despite being outnumbered, Finn had the sudden fear that Shelby would open up some portal or fly off into the air. Puck would be gone with her. And the world might blow up.

Sue raised her gun and took aim. "That's an acceptable loss."

As most of the group shouted protest, Shelby smirked as Puck obediently shuffled to serve as a better human shield. Sue was going to take her shot. It was going to happen. Finn had to move. Barely able to think of anything beyond _Go, Fast, Save_ , Finn formed his telekinetic energy into a tight ball and punched Shelby in the face.

Searing pain tore instantly through his mind, worse than he'd felt when he'd pushed himself in Columbus. Finn screamed and collapsed to the ground as pandemonium erupted around him. Shelby's quick counterattack toward Finn had left her open to a series of Rachel's notes; they exploded across the woman's face in brilliant bursts of emerald and pink. Ice struck Shelby in the stomach, and fire seared her leg. Brittany and Mike surged forward and returned in a flash with Puck, like some high-speed flying stretcher.

Though Mercedes and Kurt also cried and crumpled, holding their aching heads as Shelby struck out again with her mental bolts, it was soon over. The odds were too much, and even through the turmoil it was a simple feat for Sue to take aim and put the second bullet directly between Shelby's eyes. The woman spasmed, her eyes flashed white for one short second, and then she went limp.

"Shade," Sue said almost casually.

Kurt stumbled to his feet, unsheathed one sword, and shakily beheaded the Rift as it oozed out of Shelby. Then he collapsed again. His hands trembled.

Tina looked slowly around. "Does this mean we won? That was kind of... anti-climactic."

Finn pushed himself off the pavement. Wet warmth trickled down his face, and he swiped blood away with the back of his hand. Shelby's mental bolt had been unlike anything he'd felt before, and like nothing he'd done with his own powers. Though it hurt, he managed a weak smile for Rachel when she checked on him. Tina and Mike were helping up Mercedes, and Puck... Finn's gut flipped over when he saw Puck's terrified expression. A scared animal seemed to be crouched there, not Noah Puckerman. He only stopped moving in short, jerky spasms when he looked at Kurt, and Kurt wasn't looking at him.

_I hate to say this_ , Finn thought, even though it hurt like hell, _but Puck's about to totally lose it and he's staring right at you._ It was a good thing that Kurt's mind was so easy to reach. Anyone more difficult, and Finn's nose would have turned into Niagra. He really wanted an aspirin.

Though Kurt gave Finn a long-suffering look and wiped away a blood trickle of his own, he nodded as he pushed himself up. A few long steps put him near Puck, and after enough hesitation that Finn thought he might move on, Kurt knelt. "Hey, hey," Kurt said. His hand rested delicately on Puck's shoulder. "You're okay. She's not going to hurt you."

"I... I know that," Puck gulped out. After a few seconds' effort his face looked like the cocky boy who'd owned the halls of McKinley, but his voice still sounded like a terrified child's. "Just freaked me out. Couldn't move. It was weird."

"I bet it was weird," Kurt agreed. "But you're okay now, right?"

"Yeah. Sure. I'm good." Puck's words rattled off quickly enough that not even Kurt looked convinced, even as he didn't want to be standing there.

_I'm sorry, it would just be really bad if he snapped,_ Finn thought apologetically. _Look, you know I'm the one person who's not trying to push you toward him, right? But can you touch his face or something? Just keep him from losing it and, you know, killing everyone._ Kurt still hesitated. If it had been easy to hear his thoughts before, now it was impossible not to; Shelby's attack had knocked down a few walls that needed time to rebuild. That was how Finn instantly knew that Kurt did feel sympathy for Puck, and there was something deep down there that cared for him, but he was deathly afraid of acting unfaithful for even a moment. He couldn't, not after everything that day. _Kurt. He couldn't move and he could feel her killing him. He's really, really scared._

Their world seemed to stop for an eternity as Kurt _wouldn't move._ Around them, Santana complimented Brittany's flight and Brittany squeezed her hands and returned the favor for her fiery attack. Tina and Mike made sure Mercedes was fine after her strike, and helped her to a seat in the SUV. Rachel hesitantly walked toward Sue to see what she was doing with Shelby. Finn saw all of those in flashes before Kurt finally nodded, and cupped Puck's cheek with his hand. "You're okay," he said gently.

"I said I know," Puck snapped, but then shuddered. One hand felt at his throat where Shelby's fingernails had dug into it. Only a few spots had actually beaded blood, but even now, Finn could see a dark crescent for every nail.

"I killed the thing inside of her," Kurt said, "and Coach Sylvester killed her. Everything's over. You're not in any more danger. All right?"

Puck nodded mutely.

"Okay," Kurt said after a glance at Finn. _Yeah, like I'm supposed to know what to do,_ Finn thought with an audible snort. "Then I'm just going to—"

At superspeed, Puck wrapped his arms around Kurt and squeezed him like a life preserver. Kurt squeaked, but although Finn took a worried step forward, he could feel that Kurt wasn't in any real danger from a too-tight grip. "Just give me a second," Puck mumbled.

If that thing inside Shelby's head had made Finn want to puke just from brushing across it, he wondered what it actually controlling Puck's entire body had done to him. No wonder the self-proclaimed badass of their group was barely able to keep it together. He looked faintly green even under the yellow streetlight.

"Shouldn't have run off alone," Puck managed.

"No, you shouldn't have," Kurt said. "That was dangerous." His words were very precise. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yeah," Puck said, but his head shook slightly. "I'm just... yeah." Kurt might have tried to break away, or maybe Finn had only imagined it, but either way Puck's arms weren't letting him go anywhere until they released. "I talked to Lauren."

"Oh?" Kurt said with a helpless glance toward Finn. By then, Finn could see that they had an audience.

"She left town. And she called Sam and Blaine."

"Sue warned them, too," Kurt said. "But it was good that she did that."

"I know," Puck said. "I know we're both happy with who... look, you don't remember...." His head nuzzled into the curve of Kurt's neck, held there, and then pulled away. "Okay. I'm fine. That. Wow. Wasn't fun." After one more deep breath he pushed away and stood, leaving Kurt kneeling on the asphalt. "I'm fine," he told everyone. "Don't worry, I'm fine."

Anxious to verify that for themselves, most of the group circled around Puck as closely as they dared. At the proximity, and with every worried word that poured over him, Puck's facade of a smile wavered. Rachel seemed more concerned than most, but she stayed with Sue. Shelby's body sprawled next to them. Rachel looked down at it even as she paled and shuddered, like she wanted Puck to look as well and see that the woman who'd hurt him would never get that chance again. Finn, not wanting to further crowd Puck and aware of what was running through Kurt's mind, sidled over to him and shot his brother a worried look.

_He stuck his head right in front of my face,_ Kurt thought numbly.

_Kurt...._

_He was so close that I began to... I don't like this, Finn._ He'd smelled Puck. He'd felt him against his body. Memories had lurched in protest of Finn's shield.

Finn extended a hand and helped Kurt up. _Just focus on Sue right now. Okay? She's got you following orders. Just do that._ Kurt nodded shortly and walked toward Shelby's body, away from Puck, and Finn let out a long sigh. If Kurt would rather be around a bloody corpse than Puck, all of those jumbled-up feelings pouring out of him must be hurting Kurt as much as they hurt Finn's damaged mind. 

Needing to let his brain rest in a lower gear, Finn looked around the group and then went to talk to Artie. He could feel Mercedes recovering in the other car, headachey but healthy. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Artie said, and didn't sound hurt at being left out of the fight. "I had a good seat for everything that went down, and look." He held up his laptop, which was now leeching off the wireless of some unburnt house on the street. The monitor rotated between webcams scattered around Lima. In every last one, fires were being brought under control and ambulances were taking care of injured. Things seemed to be swinging their way. "I wonder if there are more bodies in those ambulances," Artie wondered, just as Finn began to do the same.

More people had died that night. They must have, because it really did seem too easy, otherwise. Jacob as the sole wounded innocent, and then the big bad villain promptly met her end? Their group was battered, not broken? This was a plot that had spanned years and had involved one of the most powerful intelligence agencies on the planet, and it ended with three mental bolts and a bullet in return? _Yeah,_ Finn thought uncomfortably, and stared off at where a house was collapsing into embers. _This was too easy._

He thought about that, and even as all the signs pointed toward a win, Finn began to truly worry.

"Corcoran's dead," Sue loudly confirmed. "I suppose that's that."

"But it's not," Santana said.

"Where's Beth?" Quinn asked.

"How much did she learn from Matt?" Brittany asked.

Mike's nose scrunched up, deep in thought, and he asked, "Did she send those four stupid guys to Columbus?"

"Seriously, where's Beth?" Puck asked. His voice was strained again, but Finn knew better than to ask Kurt to cuddle him a second time.

"How much did she know about us when she was here," Kurt began, ticking off points on his fingers, "why did she pick Rachel, who was Jesse—"

"Well, sorry that you don't get all your answers tied up with a neat little bow, children," Sue said, "but I'm not Santa Claus. And besides, you'd all be on the naughty list."

"Is the town cleared of any more Rifts, at least?" Tina asked. 

That made Sue check her radio and she walked off to monitor the proceedings. Hiram's voice echoed across the radio as he made his patrols, then Leroy's. At least Rachel's dads were still alive.

Despite his headache, Finn's nerves had him unwilling to take a seat next to Mercedes and doze. Ignoring the pain between his eyes, he used a hand against Sue's car to balance himself and looked at everyone left on the road. Finn grimaced when his searching glance landed on Shelby. Even though her features had warped in death to reflect her inhuman passenger, it still wasn't a pretty sight. She still looked mostly like Shelby Corcoran, only dead. 

"I suppose we won," Rachel said tiredly when Finn approached. Her eyes never wandered from the mangled, twisted corpse of the woman she'd thought was her mother. "I suppose we should be happy."

"Doesn't really feel like a big victory, does it?" Finn asked. When Rachel stood and Finn moved to pull her close to his side, she let him.

"It really doesn't," Rachel said quietly. "Finn, I _asked_ him to talk about us. Jacob would still be alive."

"You're going to save people in the future, Rach," Finn promised, and tried not to look at Shelby or think about Kurt or consider what it had felt like inside that monster's mind. "You'll make up for it. You will."

"I don't like this," Santana said as she joined them and the leadership circle completed. "Shelby made fun of monologuing, but then she totally monologued all over us."

"She told us that there's some way to take energy from Beth,'" Rachel slowly said. "We should be wondering what that is and where Beth might be."

"But we don't want to get close," Finn said. "Because then they could suck energy from us and 'boom,' right?"

"Beth might not be able to fully power whatever that thing is," Rachel said as her brow furrowed. "But what if she is? Using her might not be strong enough to blow up the entire planet, but it could take out a city. All of those people could—"

"Stop it," Santana said, holding up one hand. "She's totally trying to lure us in. Hence: monologuing. You guys, she was playing us. If we go near that thing then it's a _lot_ more people with their necks on the line."

"If we don't try to find Beth," Rachel said, "then she will certainly die and an entire city might be destroyed! I refuse to let any more innocent people die just because they were unfortunate enough to cross our path!"

"It's a machine," Artie said thoughtfully over Rachel's communicator. "It's gotta be a machine, she talked about it being primed. Where would a machine be that's all set up to drain us? Maybe over in Columbus? That could be what those guys thought they would find there. Do you think she could have gotten one built in a couple of years, working on her own? She said she was a scientist."

"No," Santana said. "No, think about how many people were involved in the original project. This took a ton of man-hours. It had to be set up already to work with... this kind of... energy...." She trailed off as their eyes met, and Santana let out a whoosh of air. "We're idiots. She moved to New York after she left here. She moved _back_ to New York. And she worked with our parents who were studying all of this crap!"

An entire research facility had been set up to learn how to extract energy from the same object that had empowered them. Of _course_. "Beth's in that facility, then," Rachel said. "It must have been abandoned ever since that night. We should go tell Ms. Sylvester. S.H.I.E.L.D. must have normal human agents who can safely assault the place and recover Beth."

"Huh. That... seems like everything. I guess we did win," Santana said, and shrugged. "Oh, uh, I'm telling everyone something," she said and took a few steps back to retrieve Brittany. She looked confused, but happily anticipatory at Santana's warm smile. "I'm dating Brittany. Like, as a girlfriend. For real."

"We knew that, right?" Finn asked Rachel.

She shot him a dark look, and then smiled at the girls. "It's great that you've accepted the terminology of your relationship with such enthusiasm, Santana." Rachel sounded happy for them, she did, but Finn knew that she was also tired. She wanted to cry into her pillow that night.

"Thanks," Santana said dryly.

"You never used that word before," Brittany said, and sounded like she was ready to melt into a puddle of emotions right there. 

"Yeah I did," Santana said. "Back home." That earned a smile from Brittany, then a long gentle caress of Santana's hair, and they kissed. It was sweet, and kinda hot, and Finn looked away before he thought along any dangerous roads. 

Shelby's corpse was still lying there, like corpses tended to do. He didn't know why he kept staring at it. It was gross; he shouldn't want to look at it.

_I don't want to die_ , he heard Shelby Corcoran say in a wispy echo.

"Did you hear that?" Finn asked Rachel.

"Hear what?"

_I don't want to die._ That time, it barely sounded like her.

"Come on," Finn said after a second's pause. Obviously, he was having creepy flashbacks to her 'dying' monologue. "Let's go."

"Let's go home," Rachel agreed. "We'll talk tomorrow."


	23. Unhappy in its Own Way

"You did so great," Brittany said and bumped her forehead against Santana's in the darkened back seat of the car. 

Santana's powers were fantastic, but more than that, they were dependable. When Brittany wanted to fly, she always could. She was no longer bound to the earth and she loved it. If she could have chosen any power for herself, she would have picked flight. But flying wasn't very useful on its own, not compared to what everyone else could do. She was far slower than Mike. When he'd thrown himself into the fight in Columbus he'd looked like some impossible special effect in a movie; Brittany was only ever herself in the air.

Next to everyone else—shields and mindreading and strength and terror and invention—her chaos powers were what pulled Brittany's weight. It seemed like they could do anything, but too often they did nothing. She never really knew what would happen, not like Mercedes' identical shields or another ice blast from Quinn. If Brittany's attention wandered, even a bit, the results were often nothing like she wanted. She was like Kurt's accidental outfit changes, except she might melt walls or turn pillows into fish, instead.

"Thanks," Santana said. "I kinda like smacking bad guys around." She was good at it, so that made sense. Brittany wouldn't be surprised if Santana decided to pursue superheroics for real, rather than leaving it behind as some adventure she'd had during high school. Brittany, though....

Mercedes had pinned down just how long it took to power her energy beam. Artie knew how to make sex robots. Tina had learned how to make people react in exactly the way that she wanted. Brittany, though, still sometimes looked down to discover that she was accidentally spreading spaghetti on her toast. No one gave her a hard time, but it felt like she was seen as kind of incompetent. Her friends hadn't laughed like McKinley classmates had occasionally giggled when she clarified a teacher's lecture, but Brittany very much doubted that they'd rely on her to be an anchor for anything big.

"I can't believe Shelby's dead," Brittany said after they stopped, let Mercedes out, and set off again. "And Jacob. Seeing a body so close was...." _Weird. Creepy. Unsettling._ She didn't like it, and Santana wrapped an arm around her when she shivered. 

"Back when we first tested what we could do," Rachel said very quietly, and both girls looked up, "Noah talked to me about the risks of being a hero. I suppose I hadn't really thought about anyone dying. He asked me if I was ready to put my life on the line." Her hands folded in her lap. "I didn't give it much thought, then. And now I'm the person who welcomed in the woman who killed one of our classmates. Or more."

"Shelby is not your fault," Santana said. Rachel didn't look like she believed her. "She had to worm her way in somehow, okay? If it wasn't pretending to be a surrogate, it could have been a substitute teacher, or Artie's new neighbor, or one of Puck's cougars."

Puck looked up at the mention, heard what she was saying, and stared unhappily out the window.

"This isn't your fault," Brittany agreed as they turned the corner toward Mike's. "Jacob doesn't... didn't know when to stop. We heard that you asked him to take everything down, but he went crazy with it. And Shelby hurt him. Not you."

"Thank you," Rachel said, sounding genuinely touched. It was probably as much from who was saying the words as them being said at all. But it really wasn't Rachel's fault. It just wasn't. Jacob shouldn't have died like that, and Brittany would cry over him that night. She'd never known anyone her age who'd died. People were supposed to die when they were eighty years old, comfortable and loved, and watching Wheel of Fortune. They weren't supposed to die before graduation.

The car braked. Mike looked regretfully at his house and Brittany could hear a sigh heave out of him from across the car. "Guess I get to go explain everything," he said.

"Your mom loves you," Tina said. "And I love you. Just remember, you won't have to put up with him forever."

"I want more than 'putting up with,'" Mike said. 

"Well, tell him the truth," Tina said. "Tell him what we talked about. We're moving back home after graduation, and so you're not going to Stanford or Harvard." She nudged her boyfriend. "They're not even in the right city, right?"

Mike smiled tiredly. "Columbia is, though."

"Do you want to go to Columbia?" When he shook his head, Tina said, "Then just tell him the truth. And he'll have to confront and accept it—and you—or you'll have everything out in the open. And whatever, at least then you're dealing with him on level ground."

"You make it sound so easy," Mike laughed and kissed her. "Bye, guys. Talk to you later." His smile died abruptly, probably as the night's memories returned, and he walked to his front door without another word. Kurt took off toward the next house and the car fell back into silence. The radio's buttons glowed in the darkness, but he'd never turned music on and no one had asked.

"Are we moving back there, too?" Brittany asked Santana after a red light. In this part of town, the streetlights still worked.

"Seems like everyone kind of wants to," Santana said. "I guess we all did live there for fifteen years. New York's way more home than Ohio." 

"Okay, but are _we?_ " Brittany asked.

Panic built in Santana's voice. "I... look, what if we go too fast and we get in a fight and I cut off all your hair?"

Brittany reached up and touched her head protectively. "Why would you do that?"

"I don't know, I lash out." Santana couldn't quite meet her eyes. "I just don't want to screw this up."

"Well, you have to actually be doing something to screw it up," Brittany pointed out. "So... what are we doing?"

"You're my girlfriend," Santana said simply, after taking very little time to consider it. "And I do want to go home."

"Okay. It's not like we have to live together a week after we start dating," Brittany said. "Although we kinda have been, and it's been going fine."

"Oh," Santana said, like she hadn't considered that. Silhouetted against a twenty-four hour convenience store's sign, she smiled.

Brittany smiled, too, but then tried to stop. She knew life was always moving on, but she should at least take some time to mourn a boy she'd known and tally the damage to their temporary home. Their future wasn't happening right that second. She could wait to figure out exactly how she and Santana would work together. 

And by then, hopefully, she'd have full control of her powers. There were only so many accidental tacos she could expect her cat to eat.

* * *

"Is Blaine... is everyone safe?" Kurt asked Sue as she escorted them into the Hudson-Hummel garage, capping off his escort service for the group. Even Santana's parents had sounded concerned when called, and so she was staying there that night. They might not love her, but they certainly hadn't wanted to see her killed.

"They're fine. I'm not sure that all of the hostiles have been cleared from the area just yet," Sue said. "I told them to stay away for a couple of days, given that they are likely targets. We don't have agents to spare to watch them, but distance should do the job. Sounds like they coordinated and got a hotel suite up in Toledo. I imagine that way Reggie Mantle can pay for Lisa Rinna's room without his ego being too severely bruised."

Kurt wrapped his arms around himself and nodded, while wishing that two people wouldn't have independently landed on an Archie Comics comparison. Blaine's hair was fine. He'd become recently and acutely aware of how often their group tossed around insults in the guise of jokes. "Can I get the hotel information?" he asked. 

"They just checked in," Sue said as she scribbled something down and handed it to Kurt. He glanced at it. Homewood Suites meant nothing to him but a name and phone number to google the next morning, but at least she knew the room.

"Who's going to talk to Jacob's family?" Finn asked as he came around from the passenger side and peered at whatever Kurt was holding, and then focused on Sue. "Explain to people on that street what that fight was with Shelby." He sounded more tired with every word. "And maybe there are other people besides Jacob who got, um, hurt...."

"I am," Sue said, and for a second she sounded as drained as Finn. "I'll liaison with the police, I'll talk to the families. It falls to me."

Kurt thought back to the discussion he'd heard while getting into the car. Rachel, Finn, and Santana had summarized their conclusions for the group, before everyone grew too tired to talk. Somewhere in New York City, their first parents' workplace held the potential doom of Earth within it. "But don't you need to have S.H.I.E.L.D. assaulting that facility in New York? To get back Beth?"

"I'll handle that, too." Sue jangled her car keys pointedly. "Yes, I'll be busy tonight. We've had some rough stretches, we're short on agents. We could use good ones," she added, and looked at Kurt before she climbed into her car.

He sighed.

The second they walked into the house, arms latched around them. "Hi, Dad," Kurt said as Burt hugged him. Carole had Finn in a similar grip and they looked like they were debating whether they should trade off. 

"Uh, hey," Burt said and the parents stepped back. "So, you're back."

"We're fine," Kurt said tiredly.

"Shelby's dead," Finn added. He looked even more exhausted than he sounded. "She was like the Exorcist or something."

"Coach Sylvester isn't positive that the Rifts have been cleared out just yet, even though Shelby was clearly their ringleader," Kurt said. About to add that they should be sure to lock up and set the alarm, his shoulders drooped. Oh, right. The broken door and the broken alarm. "Maybe we can stay up and keep watch," he said, "or go to someone's house where their alarm still works...."

"Don't worry," Burt said and guided them both toward the stairs. "I fixed it. I used to work for Stark, remember? I grabbed an interior door's hinges to use in the meantime, until Home Depot opens up tomorrow morning."

"Just get into bed, boys," Carole said, nodding. "You've had a long day, both of you. Especially you, Kurt," she added. Fresh fatigue washed over Kurt as he remembered that it was still the _same day_ in which he'd learned everything about Puck, broken out of his own house and fled to Blaine's, and made his first kills.

The brothers didn't talk as they walked upstairs. Finn clearly had a headache from whatever Shelby had thrown at him. Kurt could sympathize; the random mental bolt she'd lobbed at him still smarted. The counterattack on Finn had been targeted and personal. 

"Night," Kurt said abruptly and turned into his room. If Finn's defenses were down and he was in pain, they should at least have a wall between them. Maybe it would help as Kurt's emotions surged. Swallowing hard, Kurt sat on the edge of his bed in the dark, went very quiet, and thought.

For so long, he'd felt alone. He could remember a moment in an airy stairwell and how it felt to have hope return from deep in the dark. Even with the people he loved, Kurt had always felt like there was some part of him that they never recognized nor understood. Things hadn't been perfect with Blaine, but reality never was, and there were so many other words that he'd rather have. Words that weren't so easily bruised. All those perfect daydreams fell away and he still had the truth of sympathy, trust, and love. It was real like he hadn't known life could be.

And then he'd nearly ruined it. He'd found love and promptly started lying to Blaine about where he was and what was happening. Even if Blaine understood why he'd lied, what on earth had Kurt been _doing?_ Nothing they'd done with their silly group was worth that. Their grand efforts had only led to a bloody night in the streets. It definitely wasn't worth it. Right?

He wanted to curl up and let oblivion take him, but his thoughts clanged like cymbals. He'd risked lying to Blaine because he knew Blaine was a rock, a foundation. He was steady. He'd certainly still be there once Kurt figured everything out, and sure enough he was. Even when Kurt had told him that day's unbearable news, he'd centered himself in barely any time at all. Deaths didn't matter, creepy shadow things didn't matter. They still had the future they'd planned: arguing over valuable closet space in a tiny apartment, being supportive and completely without pressure as they worked through the first tricky years of their careers. Absolutely nothing needed to change.

But something had.

Reality was better than impossible daydreams, even if those daydreams made everything easier. Kurt didn't want to run from the truth. 

The feel of him, the smell of him: even though Kurt had chosen Blaine that day, having Puck curled up in his arms had resonated deeply. Marrow-deep, he'd known that what Finn had told him about Puck wasn't right. At first it was nothing more than a tickle, an uncertainty outweighed by Shelby's corpse and his second beheading. In the car it had been drowned out by turn signals and chauffeur services and the low rumble of conversations. Then they'd dropped off one person, and then the next, and the car grew ever-quieter. His mind grew louder.

Kurt didn't think that Finn was outright lying, but he also _knew_ his imperfect memories were wrong. Puck's protests that he'd done good by Kurt in New York were right.

Without another word, Kurt stood, walked into Finn's room, and closed the door behind him. He ignored Finn's irked, tired look as he raised his head from his pillow. Kurt's hands folded neatly on his knees when he perched on the edge of Finn's bed. "I want you to take off the block," Kurt said as Finn tried to get him to move. "The one with Puck."

Finn jerked and stared nervously at him. "Uh, I don't think that's a good idea."

"You messed with my brain without asking, Finn," Kurt said. "Believe me, this time? It would be a really good idea to respect my wishes."

"I had no idea what I was doing," Finn whispered and looked with guilt around him like their parents might somehow hear. "Everyone yelled at me. I could have really hurt you. Besides, it was wrong. Mom told me."

"It was wrong to do it without asking," Kurt said and nodded once. "But now I am asking. Rip off the band-aid."

Finn began to shake his head. "I don't want to leave you as some... coma potato in the hospital. No way. I don't know what I'm—"

Kurt caught Finn's face in his hands and stared at him intently. The heels of his hands pushed Finn's lips into a pucker, and Finn went cross-eyed as he tried to stare down at where Kurt held him. "My mind is the easiest for you to read," Kurt said, and waited. Finn tried to nod when he realized Kurt expected an answer. "You were able to send emotions right into it." Finn tried to nod again. "Focus. Can you see where the block is?"

"Yes," Finn admitted reluctantly when Kurt eased his grip. 

"Are you really too tired, or will we do this tomorrow morning?"

Finn grimaced. Kurt had done too neat of a job of setting it up as a 'when,' not an 'if.' With how he'd forced himself on Kurt's mind earlier, it was clear that he felt unwilling to deny his brother this request. "I'm not too tired. Not for your brain."

"Then concentrate, ignore everything else, and rip it off."

"But...." Finn began, only to trail off when he saw—or felt—how serious Kurt was. "Okay. I don't know if I could do it for anyone else, but... okay." Of course, he couldn't have placed the block on anyone, either.

Kurt didn't know what he'd expected the return of his memories to feel like: a migraine. An ice cream headache. Something painful, anyway. Instead, it felt no more intense than a long, loud yawn. His mind felt like it lifted, fell, and then he remembered everything. Finn hadn't just revealed one specific argument; he'd peeled away the lingering covers on everything related to the two of them. He remembered _everything._

As the memories returned, tears started pooling. Finn grabbed his hand. "Oh god oh no what did I do, are you okay?"

Kurt could only manage a jerky nod. 

"Say something," Finn said, squeezing hard enough to hurt a little. "I've gotta know that not... coma potato."

"Not a potato," Kurt choked out as the world fell into place. He moved through his memories slowly, like showing a child the pages of an illustrated book at bedtime. 

He remembered everything.

* * *

"You're sure your dad's okay?" Puck asked Kurt as they stood outside the Huttons' building. It was warm for the season. The trees on their street were in bloom, and the flowers' scent warred with a stack of trash bags that someone had piled high. That battle made Kurt think of Los Angeles again. People lived up in the hills, there, surrounded by more than just a few trees in concrete circles. He was sure that trash wasn't piled on sidewalks.

Kurt shrugged loosely and smiled. "Of course. He loves me. I promise."

"People can love you and still hurt you," Puck said warily. The sincerity in Puck's eyes surprised Kurt. They'd know each other for years by that point, but he'd never really thought that Puck cared about him. He was baggage that came along with seeing Rachel and Finn. The two of them got along, but they weren't close. That's what he'd thought, anyway.

"He never tries to hurt me," Kurt said.

"But he does."

"I just...." Kurt stared at his shoes. They were the trendiest he'd been able to find within his allowance budget. He and Finn got the same amount, but when Finn eyed game tickets or equipment, they always seemed to fall into his lap, paid for by their father. Kurt never got more off the rack or out of his sewing machine than he could afford on his own. Fashion wasn't necessary. Finn looked fine in his clothes, after all, and he wasn't paying anywhere near what Kurt thought a shirt should cost. "I'm a disappointment."

"No, you're not," Puck instantly said. Kurt wondered how many times he'd heard those words himself. "Are you seriously telling me your dad thinks you're a disappointment next to _Finn?_ Why?" As soon as he asked it, though, he obviously knew the answer.

Kurt shrugged and tried to pretend that it didn't hurt. His eyes were barely teary. "It's just easier for the two of them. Dad asks Finn if he likes anyone at school. A few dates with other girls and then dating Rachel apparently isn't enough. He thinks Finn needs to play the field. Sow his oats before he settles down. You know, all the cliches."

"He ever ask whether _you_ like anyone at school?" Puck asked. It should have been odd to have this conversation with Puck, of all people, but Puck knew about dads. Kurt had never told Rachel any of this; she'd storm right up to his father and make a bigger deal of it than it was, like he was about to throw his son out on the street. And it wasn't Finn's fault that things just _worked_ for him, even if there were days when Kurt resented him so strongly that his chest ached with it. Finn shouldn't have to hear about their father's failings. That was his hero. 

"No." Kurt blinked hard, but had to wipe his eyes. "He wouldn't want to hear the answer if it was yes, and he wouldn't want to look relieved if I said no."

"Did you ever, you know... tell them?"

Kurt shook his head. "In the end, I suppose I didn't have to." He hadn't realized how much his feelings could hurt until he'd prodded at them. A tear trickled down his cheek. Kurt smeared it away. "He tries. I'm not who his son is supposed to be, but he tries, and just... every single day I walk in there, I know how hard he's trying to tolerate me. He loves me, but I know some part of him absolutely can't stand me." 

"Come on," Puck said, looking up at the building. "You're a mess and you'd be shit at lying about it right now. We're going for a walk."

That was how Kurt wound up at Puck's, in an apartment nowhere near as nice as his own. It was paid for by only one salary, not two, and his mom was in a lower pay grade, besides. But it was clean and comfortable and they were alone. There were no well-meaning Berry fathers looming behind Rachel to ask about Kurt's day, and no overcompensating mother and try-hard Hutton father. For what seemed like the first time in years, Kurt began to relax.

They still didn't have much to talk about, but Kurt didn't mind. Silence was a blessing. It let him collect his thoughts and feel comfortable next to an ally until he walked the blocks to go back home. His father smiled at him when he came in, said it was good to see him exercising on a long walk like that, and reminded Kurt that he'd help with any homework. Bolstered by the afternoon, Kurt was able to hear the love that was there in the man's voice. It really was there. His father loved him.

Kurt knew that he just made it hard.

* * *

Their building was old and had transom windows above the doors. The one in the boys' room didn't quite seal, and so when Kurt was in his top bunk and the building was quiet, he could hear conversations drifting from the living room.

"You need to try harder," said his mother. Margaret's voice was soft and gentle. It was easy to miss words if he didn't focus.

Luke's voice was usually much easier to hear, but he was trying to be quiet that evening. "What am I supposed to do, Maggie? I'm trying my best, but he makes it tough."

"He is fifteen years old, he's not 'trying to make things tough.' He's trying to connect to a father who he probably thinks hates him. Family doesn't just happen, you know. We all try toward everyone, if we think they're worth it. I don't want him to ever think that he's not."

"Hey, I love both of my sons. Don't even try to say I don't. I just...." His voice trailed off. Kurt thought about giving up and going to sleep before he heard something he'd really regret. "I don't know why he has to be like this. Finn's normal."

If Finn weren't already asleep, Kurt's full-body flinch would have told him something was wrong. Even so, he forced himself not to react quite as much as he'd like. Finn didn't need to know about this. Kurt had to take care of his _little_ brother, who for some reason got the body that didn't earn judgment, the voice, the face, the everything.

"They're both special," corrected Margaret. "Finn might be special in the way you grew up with, and the way you feel comfortable with, but that doesn't mean it's better."

"You like going to those shows at the Met with him," Luke said. "I don't. Look, what we've got going, it works. I ask him about school, about his friends—"

"I know one thing you don't ask him about."

"Come on. I just... what would I even say? You know, one day when I had Finn at a Giants game, I thought, 'ten more years and I might be doing this with my grandkid.'"

Right. And that child would be Finn's. Because it was _normal_ to fall in love with a girl, get married, and announce a pregnancy after inviting the parents over for dinner. It wasn't _normal_ to fall in love with a boy, get married (if the state was ever gracious enough to change its laws), and adopt or talk to a surrogate like Rachel's dads had. Kurt's throat felt thick and heavy with tears. The world made it hard for him, and he made it hard for his dad, who was trying but still favored the son he'd expected when he brought home two little blue blankets from the hospital. Kurt didn't know whether he was maddest at his father, Finn, or himself.

He'd lied when he'd told Puck he hated New York, at least somewhat. He still loved the idea of it. But if he lived there, he would always know when Finn and his girlfriend were invited over and Kurt and his boyfriend weren't. Or they _would_ be invited and it would be agony to be polite. Los Angeles had opportunities for everything he wanted and was thousands of miles away. Thanksgiving and Christmas were close enough that on some years, he could probably get away with just a phone call for one or the other. 

Kurt tried to stop listening but the transom still leaked their words. He got up, careful not to wake Finn, and climbed down the ladder. The discussion cut off when he opened the door, and when he returned from an unneeded trip to the bathroom his parents had retreated to their room. Maybe they were still talking about what an effort it took to deal with him. At least he wouldn't have to hear it.

* * *

When Puck accidentally ripped off a doorknob and Artie quietly retreated from stumbling into the World Bank's servers, no one thought too much of it. They were a good-looking teen group in New York City, with parents conducting secret government research. In retrospect they could have predicted what would happen to them.

So now they had superpowers. That was fun.

* * *

"Want to go to the game, Kurt?" asked Luke, smiling broadly as he readied himself to buy tickets. He always asked, to be polite. To make the effort.

Kurt always said no. He'd suffer through something deadly boring for a true connection with his father, but Luke didn't want him there. He'd resent Kurt even more for ruining something he enjoyed with a son who didn't understand the rules and kept asking what was going on. "I'm going to a show with Tina and Mercedes," he lied, like he had the weekend before. They hadn't really made plans, but they could find something to do.

"Well, have fun," Luke said easily. "Hey Finn, where do you want to sit?"

Finn didn't respond. He was looking at Kurt with a bewildered expression, one that slowly morphed into pain. Then he turned and looked at their father like he didn't know the man, and back to Kurt for an explanation.

"Answer him," Kurt mouthed. He'd forgotten that Finn was a telepath, now. _Dammit._

Frozen, Finn said, "Uh, same as last time?"

"Great, I'll get the closest open seats. They were good."

Finn didn't ask what was going on, not exactly, but all that week Kurt could feel Finn staring at the back of his head during class. Even though Finn wasn't yet a trained psychic, he was probably getting enough out of Kurt's mind to have a whole lot of exchanges in their apartment make a whole lot more sense. "He loves me," Kurt said with a shrug when Finn tried to start that conversation. "He just loves you more. Don't ruin it, it's not like he'll love me more if you make him mad."

That night, Luke asked Finn again about attending a game. He pretended to do the same for Kurt.

"I'm actually going to a show with Kurt this weekend," Finn said and looked meaningfully at his brother. Kurt would have stopped him, if he'd only known. Still, he smiled. It was a nice gesture.

"Oh," Luke said, and sounded surprised but unbothered. "Not a problem. I'll go with one of the guys from work, then."

* * *

Three weeks earlier, they'd discovered they were superpowered. That night, they were superheroes.

"So," Kurt said, giggling at the memories of their fight, "Santana's going to need some special material for her costume."

"Nah, I like how it plays out when she's just in normal spandex," Puck said. His grin was shameless.

"Brittany'll turn you into something disgusting if you keep talking like this," Kurt said lightly. Finn and Rachel had walked on ahead. They were in full lovebird mode, and so there was no one else in the world when the other was near. 

"You were pretty great," Puck said. 

"My big contribution was tripping that robber," Kurt said. "Heroic."

"No, it was knowing to get ahead of him and stop him from escaping," Puck said. "You're hard on yourself. Knock it off. It's annoying."

"Well, sorry that I'm irritating you with apparent self-esteem issues," Kurt said dryly, and wondered if he really had to wait for his brother to finish sucking face with his girlfriend. They were supposed to arrive home together, but Kurt could wait in the hall.

"I just... oh, whatever." Puck sounded grumpy. "You were great, believe it or not."

They'd known each other for years. Puck hadn't granted compliments very freely during that time, and something made Kurt believe him that night. "Well... thanks. So were you."

"Really?" Puck asked. About to nod, Kurt instead did a double-take when he fully processed the question. Puck was never uncertain. He was cocky, confident, arrogant. He was the first person to talk about how fantastic he was. Noah Puckerman was his own PR firm. Why, then, did he sound like he deeply wanted to be told that he'd done well, by someone who really meant it?

"You were," Kurt promised softly, after taking a few seconds to survey the raw need in front of him.

"Thanks," Puck said. He'd moved closer at some point and barely had to speak over a whisper.

"Puck?" Kurt asked. Something felt strange. He didn't know if it was good or bad, but it felt more impossible than superpowers.

Rather than answer out loud, Puck took another step forward. It was the last possible one before he'd be pressing against Kurt, and some part of Kurt's mind said to back away. A larger, unfamiliar part told him not to move lest he ruin what might happen. He'd never been in that moment before and yet Kurt knew it intimately. His heart sped. 

His chin tilted without thinking and Puck leaned down to meet his mouth. He was warm and solid, able to crush stone, and yet when he held Kurt's shoulders his hands were gentle. Stubble, a faint sheen of sweat, the complex smell of a boy who'd suddenly leapt past friendship: Kurt's overwhelmed mind could only record flashes. 

The kiss—that's what it _was_ , Kurt's mind squealed at him, a _kiss_ —was soft, almost worried, like Puck thought he could break him. "Was that okay?" Puck asked when he pulled away.

Kurt stared, and then slowly lifted a hand to his lips. He swallowed. "Yes, it was perfect, thank you very much," he babbled. Puck laughed. His teeth were very white in the darkness.

_Dude, kiss him back._

"Finn!" Kurt shrieked in outrage. He leaned around Puck to glower at what he now realized was their audience.

_I just wanted to check if you were ready to go upstairs, and, uh, surprise!_ Finn shrugged as Kurt's glare sharpened. Rachel's hands were clasped to her chest, and she looked like she was actually cooing over them. _C'mon. I'm sleepy. Finish up._

"Finn is telling me to kiss you again," Kurt haughtily informed Puck when he returned his attention to the boy.

"Your brother is telling you who to kiss," Puck said, and turned around to squint at Finn and Rachel. "That's super weird."

"Well, I'm glad we agree on that." Was he smiling? Kurt's cheeks hurt. He must be smiling. A lot. 

"Maybe later we should do it somewhere where, you know... he's not."

"That might be okay," Kurt said breathily.

"Okay," Puck said with a lopsided grin. "Uh, night. I'm pretty sure that Rachel's still making creepy heart eyes at the back of my head and it's kind of weirding me out."

"Mmmhmm," Kurt said. His cheeks _ached._ How big was his smile?

"Bye," Puck said and kissed him again, quickly but firmly. He was cocky once more when he pulled back, absolutely in his element. "I know you've got your usual family stuff tomorrow, but I'll see you on Monday."

"Mmmhmm," Kurt said again.

Rachel hugged him before she left, and looked like she was going to chatter Puck's ear off on the journey back to their apartments. Finn simply smirked at Kurt and gestured toward the building lobby. "Didn't expect that," he said when they were waiting for the elevator.

"I'm pretty surprised," Kurt said. Amazingly, his voice didn't waver.

"Oh, and you looked like it."

"Shut up. I can't believe my stupid brother was watching my first kiss. That just crossed so many boundaries." 

Finn snorted, stepped into the elevator, and pushed the button. "Then don't make out in front of our place. Duh."

About to fire back a quick retort, Kurt hesitated, bit his lip, and started smiling again. "I'll remember that for next time."

* * *

He did. After all, he didn't want his father to find out about his boyfriend. That would lead to questions, and questions would lead to conversations, and none of those would be good.

Central Park was a good place to make out. Lunchtime at school, during downtime on heroic missions, in Puck's apartment when his mom was working late: they were all excellent.

Eventually, Kurt began to wonder if Puck really was worried about breaking him. Once he'd just tapped Kurt to get his attention; Kurt showed him the fingertip-shaped bruise the next day and told him to remember his powers. Puck paled at the sight of that mark, and soon Kurt began to feel like he'd been bubble-wrapped.

Another week went by before Kurt worked up the courage to roll on top during a makeout session. Being a fragile doll had been sweet and touching at first, but he knew he wanted more. Uncertainty turned to frustration, and Kurt took the initiative he'd nervously avoided, rather than having Puck guide every second of what they were doing. 

From that point on, Kurt was always on top. It solved so many problems.

* * *

Even though Kurt tried to stop him, Finn kept blowing off their father's offers of spending time together. Aware of exactly how much pain Kurt had been in over the man, it was like Finn had years of unknown guilt to make up for.

Finn didn't seem to process that he was just making things worse every time he turned down an offer to spend time with their father in favor of his brother. At first Luke hadn't minded, but gradually he started to look uncomfortable at the excuses Finn came up with: going to the museum with Kurt. Meeting their friends to go to a concert. All the sorts of things that Kurt mentioned on a weekly basis with Rachel, Mercedes, or Tina, but that Finn had never joined.

"Finn, please just go to a game with him this week," Kurt said when the tension in the apartment was becoming unbearable. _"Please."_

"But this is crap," Finn said quietly. "I had no idea. All the things he thinks about you, I just—"

"I don't want to hear them," Kurt said. "Don't. I know already, I don't need to hear." But Finn had probably heard even more than had ever drifted in through the transom. Finn had probably heard every last horrible gay stereotype in the book, and Luke was trying to figure out how he could deal with those in a son he'd fathered and raised.

"He loves you," Finn said after a long pause. "Just... I don't know if that makes it easier or not. Maybe it seems like he shouldn't, but it's this weird, mixed-up mess inside of him."

Kurt nodded shakily. "And he's my dad, and I love him. But, you know, sometimes that's just not enough. Please go to the game with him. Smile. Have fun. Okay?"

Though Finn looked regretful, he nodded. He and Luke headed out the door that weekend, laughing and crowing in their matching jerseys. Perhaps it should have hurt to watch them go like that, but Kurt was just glad that they were getting back to normal. They had an equilibrium that had been working for them and there was no need to disturb it, especially when he knew that he was seen at fault for ruining how easy things had been between them. Kurt just had to make it through the remaining years in that apartment. 

Luke wasn't smiling when the two of them got back.

"Got in an argument," Finn said shortly as he walked into their room. 

"Oh," Kurt said neutrally. "About?"

"You don't want to hear it."

No, he supposed he didn't.

* * *

"So, uh," Puck began as they walked out of the train station, well into their relationship, "I was thinking of telling my mom that I, you know, dig you."

"You're going to come out to your mom," Kurt rephrased after he realized what Puck was really saying. "You don't have to, if you think that I—"

"It's not about you," Puck said as he comfortably slipped his arm around Kurt's waist. That earned a few odd glances from people taking in the unlikely pairing, but Puck's glare turned them back around. "She's obnoxious about knowing who I'm seeing. She thinks it keeps me from dating 'too much' if she knows their names. I've been dancing around your name for a while, and I'm sick of it."

"But our parents work together," Kurt pointed out needlessly. "She'll talk to my mom and dad."

"Yeah," Puck said. "That's why I want to get your okay. Is it gonna be fine if they know that we're... you know?" 

"In love?" Kurt supplied.

"I was gonna say 'doing it on my mom's couch,' but I guess your way is okay." He laughed when Kurt shoved away his arm, and let him pretend like he could overpower Puck. "Seriously, I can lie if you're not down with this."

"He'd have to deal with the idea eventually," Kurt said after nearly a block of silent walking. This wasn't ruining the easy relationship Luke had once held with his _good_ son, nor was it forcing him to personally attend museum events that he hated. It was just knowing that one of his sons was dating. His parents already knew that he was gay; he knew that from his transom eavesdropping. "All right," he said, and smiled as he shrugged. "Tell your mom."

"Cool," Puck said and kissed him right there on the sidewalk.

"Stop that," Kurt said when he saw Puck flipping off a pair of rude onlookers.

* * *

So Puck told. If the mood in their apartment changed, it wasn't by much. Luke frowned a little more and had less tolerance for Kurt talking about clothes, but their dinners were still fine. He still asked if he could look over Kurt's homework. Kurt began to think that maybe Puck's mom hadn't talked about it, or even more amazingly, maybe his parents didn't care.

"So, Noah's mom talked to us this week," his mom said as Kurt was helping her with dinner. He tensed. 

"Yeah, um," Kurt swallowed. "I'm...."

She nodded. "We figured. And we love you."

Okay, then. So it was really that simple. Kurt flashed a nervous grin and kept chopping carrots. 

"We just wish you'd told us that you've been seeing someone," Margaret continued. "You don't usually hide things from us."

He flinched at the motherly criticism. She didn't give it often, and so it hurt more from her. "His mom didn't know that he was, you know... interested," Kurt said after an awkward pause. "In me. I'm sorry. I wasn't really trying to hide anything from you."

"Is he nice?" she asked as she moved vegetables into the pot. "I know you've been friends with him for a while, but he seems very, well... different from you and Rachel."

Kurt smiled. "He swears and he's rude and I hate his clothes, but he makes me really happy, on purpose."

She laughed at the admission of his faults, like they made the positive all the more true. "Well, okay. I suppose I'm glad both you boys are dating someone from school, so us parents can keep tabs on you," she said with a wink. Kurt relaxed further. Great, then. It was all okay. "You might want to invite Puck over, though," she said after a second. "Do the formal introduction thing to your dad. He's not too happy that this has been going on behind his back. Not that it's a problem," she quickly added. "He just likes to be on top of things."

"Sure," Kurt said, his nerves returning. Great. So his dad _was_ mad and Margaret was just covering for Kurt. "I'll do that."

* * *

He got it out of the way quickly: the next day. "Hey, uh, Puck?" Luke cleared his throat. "Can I talk to you? Man to man?"

Puck had been torn between two extremes that afternoon: the need to impress his boyfriend's father and not be written off as just some worthless punk, versus his established irritation at the man for how he treated Kurt. The compromise was to be polite, but he'd glare when Luke's head was turned. 

This was not going to go well. Kurt shot Puck an apologetic look and let Margaret herd her sons into their room. When they closed the door, he waited a few beats until he eased it open a crack and started listening to just how horrible things could get between his boyfriend and father.

"I'm going to be blunt, because I think it'll make things easier for both of us. I'm not sure what happened, here."

Puck sounded uncertain when he replied, clearly worried that he might put a foot wrong. "About what?"

"You're, well... look at you. You look like you should be picking up girls at a bar, and you're the same age as my sons." When that didn't explain everything, Luke said, "Look, I know you're friends with Finn. You dated Rachel, you go to your temple together, you're still friends with her. I get why you're spending time together."

"Does this have a point?" Puck asked, probably despite himself, and Kurt groaned.

Luke took a few seconds to collect himself. "You can tell him no. I figured out what was going on when he was doing all of this in secret."

"Huh?" Puck asked. He sounded completely bewildered.

"I love Kurt," Luke said pointedly, and all Kurt could hear was that knee-jerk defense of someone proclaiming that they weren't racist or sexist before they went on to be exactly that. He realized that his lower lip was wobbling as he fought back tears of anticipation, and he bit it. "But the kid can't see someone else getting something without needing it for himself. Finn and I used to... well, now those weekends are gone. You seem like a good boy and I just... I hate to think of what he might be doing to you."

"What?" Puck asked. It took him a long second to reply to that, and his voice was low when he did.

"I'm telling you, if you just move on, he'll get over it. I'm trying to do you a favor, all right? As a thanks for being a good friend to Finn. Just go find yourself a nice normal girl. Believe me, it'll be a lot easier. I don't know what he's been... promising you, but that's why you get yourself a nice girlfriend. Just trying to give some advice."

"To dump your son," Puck said flatly.

" _Look_ at him," Luke said, and Kurt felt like a punching bag with all its sand settled. Limp, unresisting. "Kurt is _gay_. No arguing about it, right? You, you're... you should shave that thing off your head, but otherwise you're a good kid."

And Kurt wasn't, then. Okay. Droplets clung to his lashes as he listened to his father tell his first-ever boyfriend how toxic Kurt was. Right, because he was selfish enough to not fit into the mold. How he'd stolen Finn. How he clearly must have thrown himself at Puck, mouth open or legs apart, to get a _normal_ boy's attention. The exact words weren't being said, but they didn't need to be. With their years of history he was nearly as good as a telepath. He felt arms slip around him and clung to Finn desperately, thankful that he knew to stay there rather than storming out to the living room.

"Don't listen," Finn murmured. Kurt wished that was possible.

"He deserves a hell of a lot better father than you," Puck said after a long pause. "You know who sucks? Guys who are disappointed that the people they _made_ aren't as easy as they were supposed to be, and they take it out on them."

"Hey," Luke said sharply. "This is my home and you'll show me some respect. I was trying to talk to you for your own good. Kurt is a handful, but he's smart, he'll get a good job and fit right in over in... in Chelsea or wherever it'll be. They're used to dealing with guys who're a little more high-strung."

"Try West Hollywood, asshole," Puck said. "Because Kurt's already making plans to move to the other side of the country so he doesn't have to deal with you."

When Luke responded, he sounded genuinely shocked. "What?"

"You're surprised? You love one kid and put up with the other? You try to make Kurt feel like shit about—"

"We—we don't use that sort of language inside these walls." Luke was clearly and totally off-balance, and he'd grabbed for the first easy response he could make.

"Feel like shit about himself," Puck deliberately repeated, "and let him know what a failure you think he is next to Finn, and you're seriously surprised that he's going to bolt from here the first second he can? You know, I actually asked him if you were beating him up, because you'd obviously fucked him up so bad. And I guess you did. You just did it all inside."

Luke was very quiet. He didn't have a temper, and so it wasn't surprising that he wasn't flying off the handle at Puck. He built to a slow boil.

"And Kurt didn't convince me to do anything. If I didn't want it, sir," Puck said, and spat out the honorific like a curse, "then I wouldn't have taken it up the ass twice this week." Were it a movie, a needle would have scratched on the soundtrack. Puck waited fruitlessly for a response, and then snorted and said, "Los Angeles looks nice. Maybe I'll go with him. Or hey, maybe Finn'll go, too, and then you'll actually care." The door slammed.

As Kurt cried silently against Finn, he tensed for the confrontation that must be coming. One minute passed, then another, then a third.

_Mom's talking to him._ It must be too quiet for Kurt to hear, but of course Finn would know.

So Kurt kept waiting, and waiting. His mother came in and hugged him, and told him that they loved him and never wanted him to think any differently. And then she asked Finn to stay in there with her, because Luke wanted to talk to Kurt.

It felt like walking to an execution chamber as Kurt slowly approached the dining table and sat down.

"So this has been a day," Luke said gruffly, after a long pause.

Kurt nodded.

"You've been talking to Finn about how you feel," Luke said gravely. "And you don't feel good."

He'd been thinking to Finn, but he couldn't exactly explain that. Kurt nodded again.

"It would have been more helpful if you'd come to me," Luke said. "Kurt, I know it's harder for us to connect, but that doesn't mean I don't love you." He thought Kurt had seduced a _proper_ boy away from his true life's path, but oh, he said he loved him. He just wanted to protect the world from his horrible offspring in the meantime. "But Finn, you know he takes things to heart. If you were trying to get him to feel guilty about liking sports like I do, because you were upset about thinking that I don't care about you... well, he's kind of easy to convince on things like that."

Right. He'd screwed up. "Sorry," Kurt whispered.

That was it, then. His father knew he was so miserable that he was going to move across the country, and he was _still_ at fault. Finn would always be right. Kurt would always be wrong. If he'd been smart enough to tell Puck 'no' and admit that he needed to wait until college for his love life to begin, none of this would have spiraled. Everything could have been ignored. He could have smoothed over what Finn heard in their minds, and everything would be okay. They could all keep pretending.

"Dad?" Kurt asked, because even though he didn't want to hear the answer, now he didn't want to run from the truth. "Do you really, actually love me?"

Luke sighed heavily. "I can't believe I'm even being asked this, when I just said it. Kurt, everything is just so dramatic with—" He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and said, "Of course I do. I always have, always will."

And he even sounded to mean it. "But do you like me?" Kurt asked next.

His father didn't have an answer to that one and Kurt nodded, stood, and walked toward his room. "Of course I do!" Luke called after him. "You get good grades, you—"

Kurt slammed his door behind him, let it support his body weight before he collapsed, and slid down it in a broken heap. Why, he asked himself. _Why_ had he asked that? He was wrong. He didn't need to know the truth. He needed to stay chaste and single and as someone who absolutely didn't cause trouble, and who lived inside polite lies.

His mom sat and hugged him for a long time. She was always so careful not to play favorites, because she knew it wasn't fair. Kurt wished she had. He could use someone on his side.

"Am I allowed to say that I hate you right now?" Kurt asked Finn when they'd been left alone. His brother looked blurry through reddened eyes. But no, he wasn't allowed that freedom; as soon as Finn heard the words, he looked hurt. God forbid Finn get hurt; that was Kurt's job. Be the punching bag. Smooth his brother's life for him. "Apparently not," he said bitterly and curled up on his bed.

Finn getting telepathy had ruined everything. Dating Puck had ruined everything.

No, Kurt thought as those arguments crumpled, and he curled up tight against himself. He'd ruined everything. It had reached the boiling point where his clothes and voice and singing just couldn't be ignored any more. He was too much. He should have taken a cue from the powers he'd gotten and just gone invisible. That was clearly his role.

"You didn't do anything," Finn said as he got on his tiptoes and tried to get a good, solid grip for a hug. 

"Please stop," Kurt whispered and Finn backed away.

He'd been able to pretend. Before Puck had come over, he'd been able to pretend that his father could at least stand him. Agonizingly, he still loved his father. Kurt didn't really want to run away from him; he wanted to hear that he was good. Loved. Wanted. Even after all of that.

Clearly, there really was something wrong with him.

* * *

In Ohio, Kurt sat on Finn's bed for a long time, and said nothing at all.

"Mom was so mad at him," Finn said, lost in his own memories. "You didn't hear. She kept pushing and pushing to get him to make it up to you. Show you he loved you."

But Kurt had nearly moved out of the apartment after that. He slept there, but he spent almost every other hour at school, or roaming the city. Or at Puck's. He just couldn't be around his father and know that every second he was seen as a strange, traitorous person because of what he was.

Over the course of months Luke really tried to make it up to him, although at first every action had the undercurrent of Kurt making everything so much more _difficult_ than it needed to be. Finn, still guilt-stricken over all of those hurtful years before he'd heard their parents' thoughts, was the best brother he'd ever been.

Like a ship slowly turning, things began to feel a little better. The threat of Los Angeles and cutting ties had apparently convinced Luke that Kurt was seriously hurt. He offered to do things that he never had before, and when he actually smiled at dancers at a street festival, Kurt couldn't help but spin that into a future where everything magically worked out. There, his father understood him and actually liked him. He was even the favorite. Him. He was chosen.

Then their parents died.

And then Puck and Finn threw him in the trash, and the school cheered them on.

"The only thing Puck 'ruined,'" Kurt said as he thought back to Finn's panicked words, "was the house of cards that family had built." Puck was right. He hadn't done anything wrong. Kurt had been lost then, and Puck had found him, just as Blaine had found him. He _was_ in love with Blaine, but he also remembered the deep love he'd felt then. He remembered Burt's love that Finn had sent directly into his mind. Surrounded by that much love, it shouldn't be possible to feel that horrible.

"I'm so sorry," Finn quietly said. Kurt realized he was crying, too. "I mean, I... I'm glad you got Burt."

"Yeah," Kurt said shakily. "I need to go... be alone. Not with you."

"I'm sorry," Finn said again. 

"For the mindwipe, or for being handed everything in our lives?" Kurt said thickly as he stood to leave.

"Yeah," Finn finally, simply said. He had to swallow first.

Kurt walked away and closed the door behind him.


	24. A Simple Medical Procedure

Sue missed her office at McKinley. True, her house was equipped with better gear than they could sneak into a public school, but she hated the decor. After initial assignment, she'd mentioned to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s support team that if they insisted upon marooning her out in no man's land, they could at least give her a residence that befitted an agent of her stature and decoration. They took that request and ran with it to absurd levels. 

She'd apparently made enemies during her stint in the agency, because when she'd walked in to her new residence, she'd discovered an entire house full of trophies. _Full_ of trophies. Some of them didn't even make sense for the life story they'd given her: ballet, race car driving, a Heisman. They told her not to touch a single one. Some were wired for monitoring hostile activities. Some were wired for detonation if she ever needed to destruct her house and everything within it. If she accidentally moved one of those trophies, she could ruin the carefully planned destruction sequence and take the neighbor's house down with hers.

Personally, she thought the Edelmans could do with a bit of exploding. Their dog had defecated on her lawn four times before the sight of her cleaning a rifle had finally persuaded them to keep it leashed. Inconsiderate.

So, rather than calling from her efficient office, she'd had to make the reports to headquarters with the glint of a thousand trophies around her. They agreed with the need for a quick assault on the old research facility, and would retrieve Beth Corcoran safely. Matt Rutherford had been apprehended. They were even working with the Lima Police Department to remove the bodies of anything visibly inhuman before people started to complain. It had been a good night, overall: killing a ringleader, not losing any of her charges. Sue enjoyed being efficient.

Yes, those were the times where it felt good to be an agent. Sue had no illusions about S.H.I.E.L.D. being a perfect life. Her threat to kill Puckerman to stop Shelby had been sincere. Many of her colleagues weren't walking around with all of their original parts, whether aided by machinery or cloning. But dammit, she'd probably just saved the world. After she got everything taken care of and knew that the kids were genuinely safe, she was going to reward herself with a trip somewhere fun. Maybe she'd go hiking in the Rockies. Fight some bears.

The agency really was prepared for the worst, Sue thought as she waited to hear back from HQ. Not once had they suspected Shelby Corcoran before that night, but her telepathic powers had still done her no good in finding those kids at first approach. She'd come, she'd wormed her way into a position of glory just like Sue's, probably through a similar brainwashing scheme of the people around her, and then she'd tried to investigate. But that would have proven impossible thanks to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s foresight. The kids had no idea who they were. Matt was kept ignorant of everything besides a cover story, and besides, both he and Sue were masked from any telepathic probes. 

S.H.I.E.L.D. had expected that some powers might suspiciously seep through. They knew that multiple agents living in Ohio would look quite peculiar. Had Shelby scanned their minds—and she surely did when she was trying to bring Rutherford over to their side—she would have found a very different explanation for any irregularities at William McKinley High School: Sue Sylvester's Cheerios squadron was a secret government training camp for future special operatives. 

No wonder Shelby had eventually given up, no matter how perfect New Directions might have looked to her. The cover story was as expertly applied as the kids' fake memories. Discovering the squadron would have been a tremendous spy find for some foreign government. But for Shelby, seeking only those eleven metahumans? She'd eventually have to admit that her best guess had landed her in the middle of a secret cheerleading ninja factory, not the energy-enhanced teens she sought.

And then she'd come back with better proof because of Ben Israel's idiocy, Sue thought with a sigh. It wasn't a massive cheerleading program causing any collateral oddities around school, it was only the eleven she'd initially suspected, acting like superheroes. They obviously weren't working for S.H.I.E.L.D. The government was trying to cover it up. Yes, Jacob was at fault. 

She had no issues with thinking ill of the dead if the dead were morons.

Her phone jangled and she picked it up halfway through the first ring. "Go."

"The team is in the midst of assaulting the research facility where the children were empowered, Agent Sylvester."

Good, that was fast. "And?"

"There's nothing. No resistance, no infant, no sign of any activity."

Sue frowned, checked her notes, and brought up a map of the city. The lab was in northern Astoria in Queens, on the banks of the East River, and was open and easily accessible. The river approach meant that their agents had been able to swarm it; any Rifts or lingering brainwiped personnel wouldn't have time to hide what they were doing and flee. She knew that S.H.I.E.L.D. was painfully short on available agents that week, but even a small C-level team would be enough to verify that nothing was inside a building.

Considering that, Sue leaned back and ran over options in her head. "Look at the facility through a video feed, not just using your own eyes. Make sure it's not illusioned."

There was a short pause. "We're patched into their security system now. There's nothing."

"Tell one of the agents to film it by hand and watch his own recording. Just in case someone's feeding you bad footage there."

The pause was longer that time. "Ma'am, there's really nothing here. This place has been shut down ever since that program ended, and it looks it."

Her finger tapped a steady rhythm on her armrest. "I'm going to review some information and I'll call you back," Sue said, and hung up without a good-bye. She leaned over, opened her bag, and retrieved a stack of files that she'd saved from her office as she ran from the flames.

Every last one was sealed with tape printed with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo. Stamped on the folders were security requirements and a list of the penalties for anyone who did not meet them. Fines, imprisonment, and/or execution were threatened for anyone not in the extremely exclusive access group. Sue Sylvester slid a thumbnail through the first edge, and started reading about exactly what had happened in the days leading up to the slaughter of the teens' parents. 

Years ago, there had been a ridiculous idea to approve a field trip to the facility in Astoria. Just because the children were under a watchful government eye for eight hours a day in school, some research division apparently thought it was safe to expose them to unknown, extradimensional energy. That was _exactly_ the sort of thing that happened when children were pushed into extracurriculars of which she did not approve. Sue flipped through more pages. Their heroic activities in New York, such as they were, had been identified and cataloged. No one had noticed at the time; it was New York, after all. Every other street had some wannabe heroic team with stupid costumes.

She kept reading, brow dipping further as she sought some explanation of where Beth might be. She'd come to the same conclusion as the kids: there was no way Shelby could have single-handedly constructed a device to drain the energy from them. She had to be using an existing facility, and there was only one option for that. That one option had just been surveyed by a team, and they were convinced there was nothing there.

Sighing, Sue opened another file and read about the night of their capture. She was already past a page when its importance fully hit her, and with a grin she turned back.

Yes, the children had assaulted the facility in which they'd been empowered, but their parents had recently started working somewhere else. That first place must have only been the testing grounds. There was a second, even more classified facility in place for when S.H.I.E.L.D. moved past initial research. That was it, then. If she sent agents there, she'd have that child back and New York City out of harm's way within the hour.

With a satisfied smirk, Sue picked up the phone and punched in a saved contact. The information about that second facility was too highly classified to be listed in her files, but she knew exactly who to ask. "Get me Colonel Fury."

There was a short pause. "I'm sorry, ma'am, he's not available."

"What do you mean, he's not available? I'm Sue Sylvester."

"I know who you are, ma'am. Colonel Fury is in 1968."

Sue snorted. "I don't care what meeting he's in, get him. The world might well be at risk if I can't pin down this information. At the very least, if she manages to tap that little girl's power, a big chunk of New York is going to get wiped off the map."

There was a polite throat-clearing on the line. "That's not a room number, ma'am."

Hesitating, Sue asked, "Wait, 1968 A.D.?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"What the hell is he doing in 1968? Scoring himself front seat tickets to Nixon's victory party?" Only silence answered her, and Sue rolled her eyes and said, "Right, it's classified. Fury-level eyes only. Well, send a message that when he's finished his work in 1968, he needs to travel back to this point right _now._ "

"I'm sorry, ma'am, he has to reappear one week from Tuesday."

"No, he doesn't!" Sue sputtered. She hated red tape only slightly less than she hated the complete discography of Katy Perry. "Don't you know how time travel works?"

"Yes, ma'am, and Dr. Richards assures us that setting that target date will prevent the space-time continuum from collapsing in on itself."

She was starting to get a headache. "I am facing a global-level crisis. I need backup and I need data access. This is a priority level seven situation, do you hear me?"

After an awkward pause, the assistant replied, "There's already a level seven situation underway in the Pacific, ma'am. We even had to call in help from Namor. And he barely needed to be convinced."

"There are never two level sevens at a time!" Sue said. That was the whole point of having a classification system; a level seven was something so drastic and so deadly that it was worthy of having nearly all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s resources committed to it. Which meant, unfortunately, that they already _had_ committed those resources to somewhere on the ocean floor, halfway around the world.

All right. Fine. She couldn't get any worthwhile backup, even in New York. All she had was the most basic of grunts, who would investigate where they were pointed and nowhere else. She had no idea of where to look, no files left to crack open, and no sources who might know the information themselves. _Think, Sylvester. Think._

"Ma'am? If you don't have any other questions, I do need to keep this line open."

Sue slammed the phone into its cradle and stared at her coffee table. Then, almost on her own, her fingers moved toward one file. She reread it with great care. The report was extremely detailed, and so she'd missed a single line in her initial readthrough. When she'd thought she would simply be able to call Nick Fury, it hadn't mattered. Now, that tiny detail might save tens of millions of lives.

On the night of their capture, in order to verify that Fury had been telling them the truth about their dead parents, Finn Hutton had read his mind.

Right, then. To save New York City, all they had to do was rely on Finn Hudson's brain.

Damn, and she'd really been hoping to make it to retirement without a catastrophe on her record.

* * *

"Thank you for driving us up here," Blaine said mechanically as he let his bag fall off his shoulder. Mrs. Zizes had offered to make the trip and stay in Toledo with them, since her job let her telecommute. Sam's parents were busy watching his younger siblings, and while they were rightly worried about his need to flee, they also couldn't help but let Sam go off with Lauren's mother. As for Blaine's parents, well. He knew that they were reaching the end of their ropes with the commotion surrounding Kurt. If he didn't want them to hate Kurt forever, it was best to not ask them any Kurt-related favors.

"We'll grab this room," Sam said as he looked around the generic living room and kitchenette, and then pointed to one of the doors leading off it. 

"All right," said Mrs. Zizes. "Lauren, I noticed a grocery store on the corner. Will you kids plan on getting up early and getting a few days' food?"

"Sure, Mom," Lauren said and her mother nodded.

"Great. Well, it's really late and I need to log in by eight tomorrow, so...." She gestured them toward the living room. "Just try to keep it down. Don't worry, I brought earplugs. But don't throw a party."

"We'll be quiet," Sam promised. She smiled tiredly and shut the door behind her, and the three teens sank onto the beige-and-salmon chairs arranged in front of a television chained to the cabinet. "Well," Sam chuckled after he looked around the hotel room, "at least I feel at home."

"How's your family doing?" Blaine asked, knowing that was an odd conversation to have. The three of them had been connected by their situation, but they were hardly friends. Sam and Lauren did seem nice, at least.

"Good," Sam said with a shrug. "This has been kind of helpful, weirdly. The government want to make sure we stick around for as long as they need, and so we're actually not scrambling for money in the meantime. Dad's been able to focus on doing some networking instead of, you know, getting by."

"That is good," Blaine and Lauren both said and smiled. Awkwardness settled back in as they avoided a discussion of how they'd been told to run for their lives, and Blaine looked rather desperately toward the small kitchen niche. "They have coffee," he said with relief. "I should make some coffee."

"It's late," Lauren pointed out.

"If we don't get any sleep tonight," Blaine said as he busied himself with the small coffeemaker and complimentary packets, "it won't be because of this caffeine." The process gave him something normal to latch onto, and in the scant privacy of distance Blaine found himself running through the day. 

Kurt Hummel was brave and opinionated, unique and caring. Blaine felt lucky to have found him, and when he looked back on the time when he hadn't _seen_ Kurt he wanted to slap himself for being such an idiot. Thank heavens he'd come to his senses, and that they'd found one another like should have happened long before.

He'd wondered if it was karma punishing him. Kurt left Blaine to return to McKinley, yes, but they had the summer ahead of them as a consolation. They could be inseparable. He could simply be _around_ Kurt again, and revel in the way his nose scrunched up or the ice-pale way his light caught slanting light. But no. Kurt hadn't been around. He was constantly spending time with his friends from McKinley, and Blaine began to realize just how short a time they'd had to become each other's romantic habit before Kurt left. They'd been friends much longer than boyfriends, but those other friends had known him for longer still.

He wouldn't have been surprised if he'd been forgotten. Kurt officially scheduled times for them to meet, while his encounters with everyone else were just part of his daily life. Blaine felt kept at arm's length, and he could see Kurt's ease with Puck in a way that he'd only otherwise seen directed toward him. Despite everything, Blaine Anderson was an optimistic person. But until Lauren had called to say that the two of them needed to hear about something she'd found in Puck's closet, Blaine had becoming increasingly convinced that Kurt was slipping right through his fingers.

Learning that Kurt had superpowers was only momentary relief: _that_ was why he'd been hiding. Everything was explained! The hits kept coming, though. In just more than a week, Blaine saw that Kurt playing the hero could very well get him killed, that Kurt's past was nothing like either of them had ever thought, and that his encounters with Puck were more meaningful than he'd ever feared.

And yet, oddly, Blaine wasn't worried. Not any more. That afternoon had laid Kurt's heart bare in front of him, and nothing had changed. It didn't matter if he was superpowered, from a different family, and the ex-beau of Noah Puckerman. They had hit a speed bump and nothing else. If they had overcome all of that, Blaine thought as he watched the small pot fill, what could _anything_ throw at them to overcome it? The more he thought about everything, the more his tiny smile grew. Once they were past this event with... whatever was attacking the area, then he and Kurt might actually be on stronger ground than they'd ever felt before.

Right, then. The pot finished filling and he poured out its coffee into three mugs. Everything was still on track, and his boyfriend could do _fascinating_ things with his legs. "Drink up," Blaine said almost cheerfully as he brought them their drinks. For a brief second he considered telling Lauren about their boyfriends' shared past, and just as quickly dismissed it.

Sam took a drink of the coffee, held it in his mouth, and swallowed after a few beats. "Yep. The free stuff's always terrible."

Blaine tested his and had to force himself to swallow. If he managed to finish his mug, it would be only because of reluctance to let things go to waste. He took another determined sip. 

"We're buying pop at the grocery store tomorrow," Lauren said and stared at the coffee distrustfully. Then she sobered, set her mug down, and took a while to continue. "Yeah, so. Um. Jacob's dead. They killed him. Those things."

Blaine had no idea who Jacob was, but Sam looked shocked. "What? How?"

"I don't know. Puck stopped by and said I had to run, and he told me then. That's when I called you guys." Although Blaine hadn't had long to get to know Lauren, he'd quickly learned that she was strong and not prone to drama. When her voice wavered like that, the emotions must be running deep. "I just can't believe that someone I know got killed. Like... it wasn't supposed to be this real."

"They're really killing people," Blaine said. He swallowed. Fear built, slow enough that he didn't immediately tamp it down. By the time he recognized it, it was too strong to ignore. "People our age."

"They'll stop everything," Sam said. He sounded confident, even as his eyes were shadowed with the trauma of losing someone like them. "Don't worry. You saw them in Columbus. Well, we heard them. They kicked ass. And Sue is... kinda scary, but she's gotta know what she's doing."

Blaine smiled lopsidedly and wondered just what it must be like inside Sam Evans' head. Did speech bubbles show above people's heads when they talked? It must be comforting to have that firm trust in heroes always coming to the rescue. He knew they didn't, and that things could get very bad indeed. If people were being killed around Lima, and their faces had been on the news, then Blaine held no shame in feeling glad to be hidden in some unknown hotel in Toledo.

Conversation failed the trio and they watched late-night television until they began to feel drowsy. Maybe Blaine would tell Lauren about their boyfriends after all, he thought drowsily. They were both clearly happy couples. She'd probably think it was funny.

"Come on," Sam said with a jaw-cracking yawn. "Let's turn in."

Lauren roused herself, echoed his yawn, and returned to the kitchen sink with her toothbrush so that she wouldn't bother her mother. As she brushed, Blaine looked through the other door and gestured awkwardly at it. "Seems the suites don't have doubles in the rooms. It's one king."

"It's fine," Sam said easily. "Don't worry about—"

With a blinding flash, someone appeared in their room. They all scrambled back and Sam nearly tripped over an end table. Lauren's toothbrush still dangled from her mouth. "Who are you?" Blaine asked, heart thudding in his chest. He'd heard vague descriptions of what might be coming after them. In no case did they match the appearance of a boy roughly their age, wearing casual clothing. Except for a bloody nose he looked normal, and there were no shadows hanging around him. 

"Wait, what?" Sam asked in disbelief. "You, too?" Blaine wondered if he did actually recognize the person.

"Puck said Shelby was evil," Lauren said softly to herself. Her eyes scanned back and forth, likely retrieving memories. "So he's...." Without hesitation, Lauren brought her fist back and moved to punch their visitor squarely between the eyes.

When he caught her fist, she vanished. Blaine and Sam both sucked in air and took another step back. "You know him," Blaine said as he fumbled for the phone and pressed zero, hard.

"Jesse St. James," Sam confirmed as he lifted a lamp as a weapon.

But Jesse got a hand through, and Sam vanished as completely as Lauren had. Asleep in the bedroom, Lauren's mother didn't rouse behind her earplugs.

"Help," Blaine said urgently into the phone when the desk picked up. "We're under attack. Call Sue Sylvester, we gave you her contact—"

A hand closed on Blaine's shoulder, and above his shirt collar skin touched skin. He was ripped out of where he stood and thrown into a place as dark as a new moon, and nearly as cold. The speed was terrific as he seemed to hurtle forward; the wind hurt like knives. Then he fell back into the light, shivering and clutching himself, and took a long time before he realized Lauren and Sam were in the small, poorly lit room with him. They shivered, too.

At that instant, Blaine was utterly convinced he was going to die. Rough hands, pain, scuffling noises and cries of pain; it would all happen again. This time it would finish him.

Jesse stepped out of a hole in the air. He wobbled once, looked confused, and wiped at his face with the back of his hand. It came away red. "All right," he said. They shuffled away from him on their knees. "You're here. Good. Don't be difficult, and don't move. Don't...." He placed his bloody hand against his forehead, wobbled, and cried out. Then he was gone again, and they were alone in their cell.

"Where are we?" Lauren asked, swallowing hard and likely trying not to sound as nervous as she was.

Sam looked for any identifying information, but there was none. Their cell was an oppressive shade of industrial grey, plated with metal below them and with walls of solid concrete. Iron either coated the door or formed it all the way through. Something or someone moved outside, and though they all tensed when they heard that through the tiny window in that heavy door, there was no noise afterward. The absolute silence was as oppressive as their cell. No air conditioners or fans hummed, even though it was cold in the height of July, and the sound of his own heartbeat grew to fill Blaine's ears. After looking back to them, Sam swallowed. "I don't know." He sounded afraid and didn't bother hiding it.

Blaine didn't say anything. He desperately fought back his surging fear, because he knew it could consume him. For the first time, he tried to hold onto the idea that heroes really could be counted on to save the day.

* * *

After the doorbell rang for the fourth time in a row, Kurt gave up on pretending to be asleep. He rolled out of bed, almost hit the floor, and groaned when he heard Sue's voice. Sue would want to talk to them. Sue was loud. He'd barely started to hide himself in the warm, blissful oblivion of sleep, and he didn't yet want to give it up. It would be worse to confront her in his pajamas, though, and he tiredly pulled back on the clothes he'd just shucked.

As soon as Kurt's vision focused, his heart began to ache. He could remember all those first moments with Puck and how completely he'd been in love. He didn't even want to consider them, because it was like working through his other memories: the more he thought about something, the more he remembered living that life. Simply _knowing_ that he'd once been with Puck had felt enough like cheating. He was not about to let himself fall back in love with the boy.

"Hi," Kurt said when he'd descended the stairs. He was tired. Why weren't they letting him sleep? "I can get your swords back for you, if you want them." In his fog, that seemed a reasonable explanation for why Sue had come over.

Sue ignored him to talk to Carole, and Kurt stood there awkwardly and waited. But once again, he wasn't her reason for visiting. "Finn's asleep," Carole said. "I'll go get him."

"You look like hell," Sue said when they'd been left alone in the living room.

Baleful-eyed, Kurt turned to her. "Is there any way I can file a request for the government to pay for a spa retreat week after this? Because honestly, I think I've earned it."

Somewhat amazingly, Sue smiled. Almost fondly, if only for a second. 

"I had Finn take off the block he put on me," Kurt said next. "About Puck."

Her smile vanished. She didn't look angry, exactly, but she did sigh. "You had a telepath mess around with your head right after he was hit by a mental bolt from a hostile. And after _you_ were hit."

"I wasn't hit very hard," Kurt mumbled. All right, perhaps he should have given Finn a night's sleep before asking him to rip it off.

"Corcoran probably beat down some walls," Sue grumbled. "Then you made him work more. You probably extended his healing time. Telepathy is tricky. Easily my least favorite power."

"Sorry," Kurt said and felt himself irrationally ready to tear up at the criticism. It had just been a really long day.

When Finn walked down the stairs, Kurt surprised himself by being glad to see his brother. Finn would hold the discussion's focus, at least, even if Kurt was still hurt and angry over how their lives had so dramatically favored Finn over him. At that, Finn turned and looked sadly at him. Kurt sighed. He just wanted everything to be over, and apparently Finn's defenses were _very_ down if he was hearing specific stray thoughts again.

"Finn, listen very carefully," Sue said. Kurt blinked. She sounded almost... nice. And she'd used his name. "I'm trying to find information on where a secondary facility is located." Finn looked blank and tired. With annoyance, she changed her vocabulary. "I'm trying to find another place your parents might have worked."

"Oh. And I'd know this?" Finn turned to Burt and Carole, who'd gathered to watch, and shrugged at them. 

"You read the head of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s mind on the night your parents were killed," Sue said. "Somewhere in there, you have to remember where it is. A starting point, at least. If Beth is there and hooked up, ready to prime the machine because Shelby thought she'd abduct one of you, we need to get her out of there immediately. Every second we're waiting is a second more that something could go wrong, and then twenty million people are wiped off the map."

That cut through Kurt's grey mood and he focused on Finn. "Do you remember anything?"

"I don't know," Finn said. He looked deathly pale at having that many lives riding on his memories. 

"What did Fury tell you when he said your parents were dead?" Sue suggested impatiently.

"I... I don't remember."

Carole tried next. "Do you remember what the room looked like? Or who you were with?" Sue started to answer that for him and Carole held up her hand. Sue raised an eyebrow at her, but seemed willing to be interrupted if it got results.

That seemed to ground Finn. Face scrunching up in thought, he eventually said, "It was all of us in a big office. He's... he was the big black guy with the eyepatch, right? I've pictured that guy before."

"Yes, that's him," Sue said with a hungry gleam in her eyes. "That's Fury. What did you read in his mind about what happened to your parents?"

"Okay. Good. I can kind of remember it," Finn said, nodding slowly, "but it's hard."

"And?" Sue prompted. Finn opened his mouth to answer, but froze and shook his head helplessly.

The adults all started to badger Finn. Kurt began to feel hurt, stressed, and ashamed; after a few seconds he realized that Finn was accidentally sending his own emotions out to him, like he'd done for Burt's love. Clearly this wasn't working. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and said, "Finn, what did I do when he said our mom and dad were dead? Me, specifically."

Finn stared at Kurt thoughtfully, and then frowned. "I...." But then he shook his head. "Slipped away, but it was almost there."

Encouraged, Kurt said, "Picture me back then. What did I look like when we heard our parents were dead? What did my face do? What did my voice sound like?" Tiny sensory details had turned up those first memories of their old home; maybe they could unearth this, as well.

"Okay. I can... yeah, I can picture you. You were really sad." Well, Kurt supposed, even a father he'd had trouble with had still been the only father he'd ever had. Up to that point, at least. "I can remember you, but for what I read in Fury's brain, it's harder. All I can remember is...." Finn's face scrunched up again like he was in pain. "It's somewhere people forget about."

"What the hell does that mean?" Sue asked.

"I don't know! I don't remember where it is, and I don't really know New York like you do! I just know that it's 'somewhere people forget about.'"

"Washington Heights?" Kurt suggested. "Inwood? I swear, people forget they even exist in Manhattan at all."

"Maybe?" Finn said helplessly.

"It's a start," Sue said, sighing. "Well, the Berrys are still busy. Leroy's with any younger siblings, to free up the parents, and Hiram's still patrolling for Rifts. Carole, you'll help me go through files. Maybe we can figure out something."

Although Kurt hated himself for it, he ran a hand over his face and said, "We should all meet as a group. The more we talk, the more we remember. For all we know, Tina or P... or Quinn will think of just the right thing that explains everything." He could pull an all-nighter to save New York City. Sure.

"All right," Sue agreed. "We'll meet up at the airport. There's a small jet there assigned to me. The second I figure out where this might be...." She shook her head and sighed. "You all work well together. Carole and the Berrys can watch you. I have to trust that all of you can stay alive while I go to New York and figure out how to use whatever you remember. And hopefully, Shelby hasn't telepathically zapped too many pieces of cannon fodder into protecting that place."

"On the upside," Kurt said wryly, "if they can't get us to the facility because you're busy there, then the worst they can do is kill us."

"Kurt," Burt said in shock.

"Sorry. It's been a long day."

Finn frowned thoughtfully. "If we're good together and we could stick safely together as a group, and S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't giving you any help... should we go?" Sue instantly started to protest, but surprisingly, he stood up for his idea. "Shelby was doing big boss stuff out here in Ohio, right? So if you might be facing a place that's full of basic brainwashed grunts, then wouldn't it be good to have a group watching your back and handling the numbers?"

"Keeping you apart from that machine is my priority," Sue said shortly, and that seemed to be that.

But Finn wasn't done. "What happens if you get killed because you went in there alone, and no one else gets in there in time? And then they drain Beth and twenty million people die?" He saw everyone looking at him in surprise, and explained awkwardly, "This totally sounds like a mission in a shooter game. I'm running through strategies. She's like Solid Snake."

Amazingly, Sue considered that for a long second before shaking her head. "It's not a bad point. Grunts alone couldn't peel off someone from your team for an abduction. But that still puts seven billion people at risk instead of twenty million. I just have to do the math." That time, it did seem to be the final answer. "Get in my car. I'll send a note to the other parents to meet up at the airport."

"Give me one second," Kurt said, and ran upstairs. He didn't have time to think about Finn, or Blaine and Puck, or Sue's constant prodding toward S.H.I.E.L.D. All he could focus on was making it through that night without his old hometown ending up as a smoking energy crater, and not getting killed by any lingering hostiles in the meantime. Just as he'd shucked his pajamas, he quickly swapped his clothes for his leather costume and strapped both of Sue's swords to his back. He didn't bother with his mask.

Everyone looked startled when he returned, but Sue looked satisfied as well. "It stops shrapnel," Kurt said in surrender. There was no escaping how weird his life had gotten. "Just in case."

"Let's go," Sue said. Their parents wrapped them in hugs before they could leave.

"This'll all be over soon," Burt whispered to Kurt. "Don't worry. You'll be safe."

But they wouldn't, Kurt thought tiredly. They would still be unstable energy wells just waiting to be tapped. They'd be targets for whoever discovered that potential next. _Oh well. At least we should have a few months before the next bad guy finds us._ He wondered where he was going to school next year. Another transfer had to be in his future, after all. "Love you, Dad," he said, and meant it deeply.

"Love you, Mom," Finn said, and he meant it just as much. Kurt felt it in his heart. He wondered how much else Finn was going to transmit to him that night. They quickly traded off parents, for hugs that were shorter but no less firm, and then the boys were turned over to Sue Sylvester. 

The lights of their house faded quickly behind them, and the stars overhead were cold and distant.

* * *

Hiram Berry was pulled off Rift patrol, and he began to collect the group and bring them to Sue's waiting hands. Just as Sue's car was equipped with sensors for extra-dimensional threats, so was his. Pointing out that fact convinced any protesting parents to let him take over the work, rather than driving their children through the night themselves. When things became too slow, Carole joined in, as well. Sue hadn't wanted to ask her, as her car had no scanners, but they had to work with what they had.

Brittany looked unhappily at Carole as she stood close to Finn, then hugged herself as she stood alone on the airport tarmac. It seemed kind of unfair that his mom got to come by, but not hers.

"So what are we doing here?" Santana asked as she walked up to join the group. To Brittany's surprise, she was in her costume. The red of Santana's custom fireproof material stood out in the darkness like black leather hadn't. Now, Brittany noticed that some of others were suited up. Kurt, Quinn, Rachel, and Puck had all pulled their costumes on before they came there. The rest of them were in civilian gear, mostly jeans. Brittany was still in pajama pants and felt more than a little underdressed. Her fingers nervously brushed the light cotton printed with cartoon frogs.

"I think I know where Beth may be," Sue said, and Puck and Quinn leaned forward in anticipation. "There's a secondary facility where your parents were working. It's probably where the program moved to in its later stages."

"That sounds good," Artie said, grinning. "So, you're going to go there?"

"I don't know where 'there' is," Sue grumbled. "Hudson's the closest to knowing where to go. But all that mildewed kitchen sponge he calls a brain can remember is that it's 'somewhere people forget about.' So I need you to all start talking, and see if anything more leaks out of those still-soft skulls of yours."

Most of them stared intently at each other and nodded, but Brittany noticed that Kurt was staring at his feet, like he didn't want to look at anyone there. Maybe he just didn't want to see Puck.

"Okay, so if it's somewhere hard to remember," Mercedes said thoughtfully, "then, uh...."

Tina asked the obvious question. "How are we going to remember?"

"What time did your parents leave for work in the morning?" Carole suggested. Sue looked startled, then pleased, as Carole explained with a smile, "Maybe we can triangulate likely areas, based on when people left and their starting locations."

"Good work," Sue said, sounding unsettingly sincere. "Maybe your crippling psychological trauma didn't completely remove your usefulness as an agent."

"Appreciated, thanks," Carole said dryly.

Brittany tried her best to remember when her parents had left each morning. She could remember what Williamsburg sounded like, the restaurant below her apartment, and the wonderful smells every day when she got home. She could remember the first time her hand had cupped Santana's bare breast, even, and Santana's smile that mingled disbelief and ecstasy. (She didn't plan on sharing that with Sue. Not unless she really changed the topic of discussion.)

But she had nothing to contribute about where that stupid building might be.

As they fell mute with frustration, Jesse St. James appeared in their midst, coughed up blood, and dropped to his knees. Shrieks and yelps came from everyone but Sue; she didn't hesitate before leveling a gun at Jesse's head. "I'm not here to hurt you," Jesse said weakly. "I had to... I had to do what she said. Rachel, I just want you to know that. It wasn't my decision."

"Is Shelby still alive?" Finn asked, swallowing. Rachel's eyes were huge, but any temptation she had to reach for Jesse was clearly staved off by Sue's wary stance and the memories of what had happened to Puck when he got too close.

"I'm very sorry," Jesse said and looked around the group. Through whatever was going on, he did seem apologetic. "You don't argue with Shelby Corcoran. I don't remember much of...." His eyes started to lose focus. "Of the past few years."

Sue shoved her gun forward. "We had someone play dead before. Talk. How did you just appear here? You're not part of this group and you weren't working at the facility. How did you get powers? Mutant? Magic?"

"They shoved me in," Jesse said. He shook. "There. The machine. I was in New York auditioning for shows. I thought my talent would... the Broadway shows would... I'd show UCLA. My triumph would be their...." He placed a hand against his forehead and cried out. "This hurts."

Heedless of the risk, Sue grabbed his shoulders after that little detail. "Where were you? Where did they take you?" Jesse only whimpered, and she shook him hard. "Was Beth there? Shelby's baby?" He nodded. Brittany felt a shiver of fear at the confirmation that Beth was there, ready to be drained.

Words lodged thickly in his throat, no matter how hard he tried to speak. His amazing voice was useless, now. After another attempt to answer her, Jesse spasmed and collapsed, and blood trickled from one ear as he went still. The group sucked in a collective breath.

"Dammit," Sue said, and Hiram ran in from his patrols to kneel next to Jesse. "They crammed him full of energy to force any sort of reaction, any sort of _powers_ , so he could carry out Shelby's plans. I'd bet on it. And it might have killed him before we found out the specifics!"

"Stop," Carole snapped at Sue as she kept her from kicking Jesse's ribcage. "It sounds like Shelby brainwashed him to be her second, just like she brainwashed everyone into thinking she was Vocal Adrenaline's director for years. It's not his fault."

"I've heard a few bits from Rutherford's grilling," Hiram added meaningfully. "He hooked Shelby up with the same plastic surgeon who made him look younger, for the right price. That's how she looked so much like Rachel. The woman came prepared. I wouldn't be surprised if she had Jesse set up as her own personal timebomb to carry off whatever she didn't manage to do."

"Are you _sure_ that Shelby might not just be kinda sorta alive?" Finn asked again.

"Can't you take him to the hospital?" Rachel choked, and the adults seemed to abruptly remember that minors were standing there, watching someone else they knew die. Shaken, Carole nodded and pulled out her cell phone. 

"Beth's in the machine," Sue said as she began to pace. "She's just as empowered as you are with the Tesseract's energy. It has to be. Because you got your powers from the Tesseract, the machine's designed to pull out its energy, and they were able to yank enough from her to jam into St. James. But they didn't know what they were doing. Your steady powers must have been a one-in-a-million shot. They only managed to overload him."

"You know what they'll do next," Hiram said darkly as he stared at Jesse. Rachel kept moving toward Jesse, teary-eyed, but then would pull back into Finn's arms just as quickly.

"Yes," Sue said regretfully. "They'll grab someone else she brainwashed, stick them in, and turn it on again. And every time they try to charge up some grunt in the hopes of grabbing even one of these kids, Beth's power might backfire and blow up the city. We can't wait any more. I have to get there, now. I'll just... I'll improvise."

"We should go with you," Quinn said.

"Would you stop suggesting that?" Sue asked impatiently. "The Jolly Green Giant said the same thing, and I don't want you near that machine."

Brittany looked up at Finn as he shuffled next to her, Rachel still dazed and clinging to one arm. "What if Shelby's still kind of out there, though?" he asked plaintively. 

Brittany shrugged. "I guess it could happen." He looked a little relieved at having someone finally acknowledge him, and returned to comforting Rachel. Next, she took the chance to look around their group and see what people though of Quinn's suggestion. Santana looked fearless, of course. Puck's jaw was set; Kurt was trying not to look at him. Artie was thoughtful, Tina and Mercedes paced, and Mike had lifted a few inches off the pavement. He looked torn as he bobbed in the air.

"We should go with you," Quinn said again, "because if there is going to be another person like Jesse, then who knows what powers they'll have crammed into them? Jesse teleported here. What if he'd managed to teleport away with one of us right back to New York? What if the next person could mind-control one of us into coming along? Or burn us all and pick up whoever's left alive?"

"We're stronger as a group," Santana agreed.

With closed eyes and clenched fists, Kurt said in a rush, "I had Finn take off the memory block, I remember everything." Puck gawked, and Kurt forced himself to open his eyes and meet Puck's. "I just... Quinn said I was required to talk to you. I know you weren't bad, now. I remember everything, I remember what we were like and I don't blame you for anything. Okay. Now I can focus on this mission. No more talking. All done. Yes." He exhaled, smiled hugely, and nodded at Sue. "Right, I'm ready to go. Let's save Beth. And New York."

Puck stared at Kurt for a few seconds longer, with eyes that said there was in fact more to be discussed. But then he swallowed, returned his attention to Sue, and said, "We can't split up. And if we're back there in the city, for all you know, we'll remember some place our folks talked about."

"You still have no idea where to actually look," Tina said.

"If we stick together," Mercedes said, "then the next guy they cram full of energy won't be able to grab one of us very easily."

"We're pretty good by now," Artie said, without too much grandstanding. "Just saying." Santana stood behind his chair, folded her arms, and nodded.

Sue met Carole and Hiram's eyes regretfully. They all clearly shared the same opinion and none of them wanted to say it. "You have no idea where to go, Sue," Hiram said. "These kids, especially Finn, are your best bet. You can't just take off on your own while they try to talk it out here in Lima. Millions of people are going to die, otherwise, and they're right. Jesse could have grabbed one of them. The next person well might."

"Don't let them die," Carole choked out. 

"I won't," Sue promised, then spun on her heel and faced the group again. "We need to get there right away," Sue said. "Even flying might take too long." Her eyes lit up and Sue rounded on Brittany. "You."

"Me?" Brittany asked, her eyes wide. "Mike can fly faster than me, if that's what you mean."

"Not flying," Sue said. "A portal."

Brittany swallowed. "I've never done one of those before. I don't know if I can." As everyone faced her, Brittany realized she was finally being put in the anchor position. They weren't dismissing her and she wasn't incompetent. Her powers were unique and valuable, and that respect just had to come for something she had no idea how to do, didn't it?

"We're standing in a tiny airport in Lima, Ohio," Sue said. She pointed at a tarmac mostly populated with crop dusting planes. "We don't want to be here. Remember New York. Hiram, carry off the boy so the ambulance doesn't disturb Brittany while she's focusing."

With an agonizingly reluctant look, and one kiss and "I love you" for his daughter, Hiram Berry carried away the bleeding body of Jesse St. James. The group watched him go before turning back to Brittany. Her gaze darted between everyone, then to the splatters of blood that Jesse had left on the ground, and she swallowed.

"Picture JFK, not here!" Mercedes said. 

Mike nodded. "Tons of huge jets."

"Mike, jets could be anywhere. She might land us in Atlanta. Picture the Empire State Building!" Rachel suggested. 

"No, think of the places we went for Nationals," Artie said, and Kurt pointed at him.

"Yes! Think of the performance stage for Nationals!" Kurt said, nodding. "That's a recent memory, it was never even masked, it's perfect!"

"But it's in the middle of a building," Tina said. "What about picturing somewhere that's not, you know, behind a bunch of locks?"

They were all so loud, so demanding, and Brittany still had no idea how to _make_ the damn thing. Her heart pounded, then her head followed suit. Was she seriously supposed to just be like, _hey! A portal! Sure, why not?_ Because she was pretty sure it wasn't happening.

As panic built ever-higher and it became hard to swallow, Santana took Brittany's shoulders in her hands. The world around Brittany reduced to the singular sight of Santana's face: loving eyes, a gentle smile. "You can do this," she said. Her voice resonated within Brittany. "Focus. Imagine being here, and then... and then remember where we used to be. Open it up between them."

Brittany stared into Santana's eyes. She found herself able to tune out the group and only listen to Santana's words. 

"Picture somewhere with us. Just us. Think about how you want to be there. How you want to step right back there, and so you're just going to rip a hole through reality to do it."

They loved the park. The trees, the small hills. Not Central Park, but a park closer to home. One that felt like just theirs. Brittany thought of the bright patterns of spring leaves against the sun, how the shadows had dappled Santana's face, and began to nod. "I see it."

"Let's go back there," Santana said. She kissed Brittany, and smiled as she pulled back. "Just open it up, and let's go."

Brittany swallowed, then nodded. "Okay," she said, but when she closed her eyes she hesitated. Everyone was counting on her. If she screwed this up, it would be in front of everyone. There would be no hiding this failure. Focus on Santana, she told herself, and not the chance that she could screw this up when the whole _world_ might be counting on her.

When a magenta-edged hole in reality ripped open the night air, she seemed to have done her job. Brittany let out a sigh of relief and grinned at everyone; they grinned back.

Sue looked down at her phone just as the debate began whether to walk through one-by-one or as a group. "Hold up. I just got news from headquarters."

Finn frowned, and with a distant look in his eyes, interrupted her. "They were taken."

"Don't read my mind, Hudson," Sue said darkly. "I didn't even think you could, with the shields."

Finn rounded on the group. "Before he teleported here? Jesse went somewhere else. Because he wanted to make _sure_ that we would go to New York." Everyone looked momentarily confused, but when he turned to stare at Kurt, a thin, high cry escaped the boy.

"What happened to them?" Kurt whispered. "How did he find them? How—"

As the group realized that Blaine, Sam, and Lauren had been abducted to New York, their focus shattered anew. Brittany tried to maintain sharp attention on holding the portal open in that commotion. They needed to either go through it or let her shut it. She didn't have the energy to spare on worrying about those three; she had a portal to maintain.

"I'm going," Kurt said with tears in his eyes. "I have to find him." Puck and Mercedes also stepped forward. "And don't you dare tell us no, because we were already going. I know they're bait. This means they're waiting for us. _I don't care._ "

When Kurt lunged at the portal, Sue caught him by the collar and threw him aside. "Stop," Sue said sharply. "Brittany just opened that, we haven't tested it. We have no idea what's through there. It could be a portal straight to New York, or it could take a few very unpleasant detours first. She looks like she did it right, but that doesn't mean she did it safely."

Brittany made a tiny, annoyed noise. If they weren't going to use her portal right away, they shouldn't have asked for it. This was hard.

"They could be dying," Kurt said. His eyes glistened. "I don't care if it leads straight to... to some hell dimension, I'm going!" Behind him, the group nodded, some more fervently than others. Puck and Mercedes looked to be weighing their chances if they simply bolted past Sue.

"That 'hell dimension' could be literal," Sue said, eyeing him. "You have no idea what's out there." When the group made another move toward the portal, she held out her arm parallel to it, to block them. "We don't have sensors, so I'll have to test it."

"Sue," Carole said warningly. "This is risky. I know the stakes, but—"

She shot her a flat look. "I'm in command of this mission. I'm not sending in my protective targets for tests, and officially, I can't order an inactive agent into the line of potential fire. Or do you want to test this, Lieutenant?"

Carole glowered, but said nothing more.

With a deep breath, Sue balled her left fist, extended her arm, and slid it through the tear in reality. Almost instantly, she screamed and fell backward. Up to where she'd put her arm through the portal, her sleeve was in ribbons, as was the flesh beneath. It was torn in rough chunks, sometimes down to the bone, and blood spewed from shredded veins. In her pain, she even let her gun fall and go skidding across the pavement. Everyone took a step back, gagging and terrified. After a few long seconds spent hissing between her teeth, Sue slammed her good fist against the ground. "Goddammit! I was going to make it through without anything bionic." Her fist tightened. "Fine. I'll get a new arm model. A good one. With a machine gun inside. Kurt. Santana."

The named duo froze. Everyone else, consciously or not, took a step back and left them standing before her.

Though her voice was tight with agony, Sue remained in command. "They'll need a clean base to attach the prosthetic. Kurt, cut off my arm. Right where I'm pointing to. Santana, cauterize it."

Both stared at her, eyes huge with horror. Carole opened her mouth to protest, but closed it helplessly. She trembled.

"I am _bleeding to death,_ " Sue snapped. "Get over yourselves and do your job. Or was I deluding myself when I thought I could count on either of you for anything? It's a wonder I actually won that title two years back, letting you waddle in front of a camera. You didn't like one castration joke, Porcelain? Or should I say Ladyface? Think about all the ones I'm going to haunt you with when I bleed out in front of you, because you didn't have the stones to save my life. You're as useless as—"

With a high, pained cry, Kurt lifted his sword and brought it down through flesh and bone. Sue screamed as her mangled arm fell free to the ground, her agony raking their ears, and Kurt spun away and gulped for heaving breaths. Carole pulled him into a hug and he clung to her.

"Santana!" Sue said once she'd howled out the worst of her pain. "If you want to do something useful for once in your life beyond serving as an emergency flotation device, then fire up your hand and cauterize me!"

Expression ugly with tears and fear, Santana cupped her fiery hand around the stump of Sue's left arm. When Sue screamed again, Santana scrambled backwards so quickly that she tripped over her own feet. Quinn and Brittany helped her up, although she shook so hard that she barely managed to stay standing. Finn cringed and put a hand against his forehead, and looked ready to pass out.

Realizing her portal was still hanging open, Brittany let it close with an audible pop.

She'd done that. She did exactly what she was asked and Coach Sylvester had lost an arm. Brittany went very still, very quiet, and tried to make sure that absolutely no one would notice her.

Tina leaned out of Sue's car as its hood popped up, then circled around to lay her hand on the battery. "I thought you wouldn't mind." Sue didn't say anything as she panted. Tina's eyes flared momentarily, and when she walked toward Sue her hands glowed. "Here," she said, and laid her hand on Sue's face.

Though Brittany had a second of wondering why Tina was trying to make the poor woman feel worse, Sue's eyes fluttered closed not in pain, but in relief. "Thank you," she said and almost sounded like herself. "You're better than morphine. I guess your club does have some use, after all."

"Sue," Carole said in shock. Kurt risked turning his face out of Carole's hair to look at the woman whose arm he'd lopped off, and cringed. "You have to go to the hospital."

"No," Sue said and stood. Sweat beaded on her forehead. "I don't. I'm right-handed. Give me my gun," she ordered and Mercedes carefully picked it up off the pavement and returned it to her. "This happens to everyone. My boss lost an eye. Oh well. All this means is that the fierce perfection that is Sue Sylvester will be contained within a slightly smaller space, further concentrating my essence. We're flying, after all. Let's go."

"Sue!" Carole said. "None of these kids knows how to fly, and you only have one arm!"

That made Sue frown again and she rounded on Artie. The boy opened his eyes wide when he realized she wanted to know if he could serve as a co-pilot, and shook his head frantically. "I need you, then," Sue said and walked toward Carole. 

Carole swallowed. "Sue, I haven't flown since... since then." Brittany didn't know what 'since then' was, but she sounded really traumatized by it.

"Please," Kurt said softly. "Can you fly us? I have to get there. Please." Though he kept a grip on Carole's shirtsleeve, Kurt couldn't look away from Sue's stump as he asked. Neither could Brittany. Jacob was one thing; Shelby and Jesse, another. But Sue was someone in Brittany's daily life, someone she _knew._ _They_ might even be able to die if Sue Sylvester was standing there and her shredded arm was still on the pavement.

A warm summer breeze whipped across them, smelling of grass and gasoline and smoke from the city's fires. In the distance, Brittany could hear an ambulance. Someone was taking care of Jesse. Good.

"I know Hiram's qualifications," Sue said gravely. "He's not a pilot. You are. And you're right," she said with a gesture to her burnt, oozing stump. "It'd be a little tricky to fly with this." Anyone who knew Sue Sylvester could hear the agonized undercurrents to her voice. "Carole," Sue said after a long, grave pause, "I need help."

"All right," Carole said heavily. "I can handle a plane. I wouldn't be much use to you on a helicopter, but I can handle a plane. Let's go, kids." She pointed to the sole hanger at the airport and led them toward their transport. After some consideration, and noticing that Sue was focused on holding herself together in her pain, Carole sent a quick message through her phone for Hiram to pick up Sue's arm. She didn't want some animal to carry it off.

The plane was surprisingly large, though nothing like a commercial jet. Had it really been just a couple of months earlier that New Directions filed onto a United jet to fly to Nationals? They'd performed for the plane when the attendant announced who they were and where they were going, offering up some of their well-worn classics. Rachel had wanted to ignore the seatbelt sign and stand at the front of the cabin so the passengers could all see her face. Brittany desperately wanted Rachel to be happy and obnoxious and confident again, rather than shell-shocked over Jesse's potential death. She even wanted Mr. Schue there, and he _never_ made any situation better.

_I'm scared,_ Brittany thought as they all found seats. _I'm scared and I want this to be over._ They were able to fit into Sue's plane without too much trouble, although Santana sat on Brittany's lap and Tina sat on Mike's. "So we're flying to New York," Artie said nervously as Mercedes helped him secure his chair to the wall. "To save the world."

"No," Quinn corrected. "We're flying to New York to save New York, and we're hoping we don't destroy the world in the process."

"He has to be okay," Kurt whispered as Carole and Sue ran through their safety checks and pulled the plane onto the runway. Many of them had clutched for their armrests when the plane set into motion, but Kurt was too panicked to notice. "He has to."

"Hey," Puck said. Kurt looked at him and swallowed. "Let's save them, okay?"

Amazingly, Kurt actually smiled at Puck. His eyes were teary. "Yeah, let's save them."

With a roar and rush, they lifted into the air. As many of them had never flown before that Nationals trip, nerves could have easily fired again over the flight itself. Everyone seemed consumed by their impending business in New York, though, and the ongoing discussions were about that. Brittany mostly tried not to think about her portal. She was wrong. She didn't want to be an anchor. She would fly, that was all she would do, and everything would work perfectly. She would fly. Only fly. No one would count on Brittany Pierce.

"We're at cruising altitude," Carole soon said. "We'll touch down in about forty minutes. We're setting a good speed." Her voice barely shook, but even from her seat near the back, Brittany could tell that she was nervous and just holding back fear. 

"I hope it's fast enough," Sue sighed. She stood, awkward with only one arm to push herself out of her seat, and took a place at the head of the aisle. "Kids," she said gravely, "now it's time to think about your past lives. You _have_ to remember where we're headed. Otherwise we're going to be right at ground zero when the nuke goes off, if our luck doesn't hold. Take deep breaths, clear your minds, open it up like a flower... all that yoga crap."

"Open our minds?" Finn repeated uncertainly, even as fear seemed to slide away from him.

"And all that yoga crap, yes," Sue said. "Weren't you listening?"

"Ms. Sylvester," Finn asked. "How do you think they found the three people?"

Everyone looked at Sue for an answer, but she could only hiss through clenched teeth and shake her head. "I have no idea. I'll figure it out, but that'll come later. We'll get Beth out of that machine and they'll be saved along with the city. That has to be good enough for now."

"What if someone saw the hotel's name?" Finn asked innocently. Brittany blinked at him. What a weird question. "And their room number?"

"What?" Sue said. She squinted at him. Carole glanced over her shoulder as she steered the plane, and Kurt looked at Finn in bewilderment. 

Purple flared in Finn's eyes and over his forehead, and then around Sue's gun where it hung in her holster. It flew from her hip to his waiting hand, and he clicked off the safety and took his shot without hesitation. The bullet punched through Sue's chest and splattered her blood across the cockpit. Everyone screamed as the alarm kicked on, and Carole tried desperately to keep the plane under control with a hole in its windshield.

That hole sealed over with telekinetic energy. Finn smiled thinly, and shrugged at everyone staring at him in horror. "Weren't you listening?" he asked in a voice that barely sounded like him. "You already knew not to believe Shelby when she played dead."


	25. We Can Be Heroes

"Finn?" Rachel asked in a small voice. The world moved in jerky lurches around her.

Finn's hand holding the gun.

Sue making thick, horrible sounds.

Kurt lunging for Finn.

Finn's face shifting between fear and something foreign that she didn't know at all.

"Who are you?" Kurt demanded as he grabbed Finn's t-shirt in his fists. "Oh god, I can feel it, what are you doing to him?"

"Help me," Finn whispered, then laughed in a voice that Rachel had never heard before. It cut off abruptly, and he started crying and dropped the gun to the ground. Mike snatched it away from him, moving in a blur, and pressed against the curved wall.

After a quick look at Finn and the gun, Santana, Brittany, and Quinn bolted for the front of the plane. Carole stole glances at her son with a broken expression as she kept them in the air. "Finn, baby?" she asked. "What did you do?"

"It's inside me," he choked. "The thing that was inside Shelby. One's inside me. I felt it, she broke my shields, they heard me, she told them, they knew I'm a telepath, they came after me. They got inside my thoughts and found out where they were in Toledo. Help, please. Get it out."

"Oh my god," Quinn choked as she checked on Sue. When tears began to trickle down her pale cheeks, Rachel felt distantly that she'd started, too. "She's still alive, but...."

"What does it want with you?" Kurt asked. He occasionally looked over his shoulder at Sue, shattered, but always returned to Finn. "We're going there! Isn't that what they wanted?"

Finn shuddered. "When we were close to the machine, it was going to kill Sue and grab someone. Shove them in. I had to...." His eyes screwed shut. "I couldn't stop it. It was taking over. I could only make it go earlier, so you guys would know what was happening. So you wouldn't be taken by surprise in New York."

"We're in a plane!" Mercedes said and pointed at the windshield still plugged by his energy. "Are you nuts?"

"Mercedes!" Rachel snapped and lunged out of her chair to grab Finn's arm. "Finn, please listen to me. You have to hold on to yourself. I _love_ you, I can't lose you to this thing. Please stay here, please."

"How did they get to you? How did she 'tell them?'" Kurt asked desperately, but then froze. Maybe he'd realized it himself, or maybe he'd heard something from his terrified brother. "Being around this energy, like we have in us. It means psychic remnants hang in the air after someone dies. That's how they got the memories for our parents, Dad told me that. Shelby stayed around, didn't she? She clung to you. She told them to grab you. And I...." Tears spilled down his red, blotchy cheeks, now. "And your brain was hurt and open, and I made it worse."

If Finn's shields were down, a Rift probably could have stayed as pure energy and slipped right in. It never would have formed a physical body they could notice. And after all, Shelby had told them how easily they could connect to psychic minds. "We're here, Finn," she promised and squeezed his hand. "You just have to hold on. Then you can shove it out of yourself again, or we'll get help, and everything will be all right."

"Kurt," Santana said and looked at him meaningfully.

At first annoyed at her for daring to pull him away from Finn, Kurt turned and went very still. It was like he'd entirely forgotten Sue, and now he could only stare at her bleeding body. Carole, still in the pilot's seat, was rigid as she flew.

"She wants to talk to us," Quinn said.

Rachel knew what that meant. "Go, I'm here with him," she whispered to Kurt, and clung more closely to Finn as he shook. Mechanically, Kurt nodded and walked down the aisle. From where she served as Finn's life preserver, Rachel could hear Sue's words in the small plane.

"You should turn around," Sue said. Her breath rattled as it left her chest. "Go back home. You won't have my talent making up for...." She couldn't finish. 

"We're incompetent," Santana agreed, voice choked. "We know, right."

"Horrible," Brittany said.

"Embarrassments," Kurt offered.

"Manatees who got lost and wandered from Florida to Ohio," Quinn said. The four looked at each other with glossy eyes after that last one, and smiled. It looked like it hurt. As Finn breathed in and out and did nothing else, Rachel let him cling to her and watched the front of the cabin. Everyone but the four around Sue had gone very still.

"Stick together," Sue said. Her voice sounded thick, like Shelby's had as she sprawled on the street. "Santana, Brittany. There's a reason they kept you two as a pair."

Santana took Sue's remaining hand in her own and nodded through her tears. Brittany hugged Santana's shoulders. "We will," Brittany said.

"You two...." Sue's eyes closed, and Kurt and Quinn both grabbed for her hand and claimed it from Santana. "My bag. Look there. And don't be on your own. But be great. Don't disappoint me."

"Okay," whispered Quinn and Kurt, one after the other. Then things went even quieter, with only Finn's gasping breaths and the whine of the high-tech engines, and Rachel knew that Sue had died. Rachel's body numbed and her eyes wouldn't focus. Mercedes' mouth hung half-open. Artie stared at his hands, folded in his lap.

When she spoke, Carole sounded apologetic for breaking that spell. "Artie, I know you shook your head earlier," she said. Her voice wavered. "But I really do need a co-pilot. I can tell you what to do."

"Right," Artie said shakily and looked up. "I should be able to... I've been able to figure out things when I'm using them. I'll be okay. Puck, can you get me up there?"

"Wait," Kurt said. Rachel turned again and saw him gently fixing Sue's hair. "Santana, do you mind if I use the seat you were in? It's not... she shouldn't be on the floor."

"That's fine," Santana said. She and Brittany pressed against the wall, out of the way, and Kurt tried to move Sue's body into the seat Santana had vacated. It wasn't the graceful, respectful carry that Rachel had expected from the movies; the full weight of an adult body was more than Kurt could easily handle. Quinn did what she could, and together they managed to get what was left of Sue Sylvester seated and belted.

Silently, Puck carried Artie down the aisle and helped him get seated in the co-pilot's chair. "I can't really see," Artie said in a wavering voice that he tried to steady. "There's blood all over the window. And Finn's little telekinetic patch."

"That's all right," Carole said. She took several deep breaths. "I just need you to watch the instruments. I'll tell you what to do. We'll land at Newark. I'll get authorization. It'll all be fine."

As if she'd forgotten until then, Quinn jolted and dug for Sue's bag. She opened it, and then, confused, retrieved several sealed files. "It's what they did to us," Quinn said after a few seconds of study. "She grabbed it. It wasn't in the school when it burnt."

"Does anyone actually want to look at that now?" Mercedes asked. The group, stuck in a small plane with a broken windshield and ripe with the scent of blood, shook their heads. "We'll do it afterward," she told Quinn. "After we save everyone."

"Right," Quinn said and put it back into Sue's bag. Her hand trembled as she fixed another stray piece of their former coach's hair.

"You're going to be fine," Rachel said to her silent, terrified boyfriend, and tore her gaze away from Sue's body and the bloody windshield. 

Finn said nothing, only whimpered. After looking helplessly around at the seats not sized for someone of Finn's height, and not wanting him to feel claustrophobic again, Rachel steered him back to a tiny conference table. "You're going to be fine," she repeated as he perched on the table's edge and braced his legs against the rumbling floor. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, but then kept them there when they stilled. He couldn't see anything that way, Rachel supposed. Couldn't see Sue.

"They're going to do it," Finn said haltingly. Kurt returned, then; Rachel noticed blood dark against his pale hands. She chose not to say anything. "They're going to keep pushing Beth. If they can't get us there, then they want to use the machine to blow up the city."

"So," Kurt said, his face grim, "they're flat-out sadistic, then." He looked back to the front of the plane. Rachel knew who— _what_ —had his attention, and she said nothing. Sadistic, indeed.

"It's not... whatever that word means. The feedback with Beth, it wouldn't be a little dimensional burp. Or a black hole. It'd be an explosion. A whole city getting blown up, being set on _fire_...." Finn trailed off, and Rachel felt a chill.

Santana had wondered if her fireballs were safe to use against the Rifts. Yes, Kurt had told them: so long as she hit them very, very hard. She had to hit them so square-on that the damage to their assumed physical forms would overcome any benefit they got from the fire's thermal energy. Coming into their dimension was draining for the Rifts. Setting fire to McKinley had probably just only recovered what they'd lost in the process of getting there; they'd come hoping for a bigger payoff.

The entire New York metropolitan area being set alit with a single move? That was an _excellent_ energy payoff. 

That sort of energy would open a lot of doors for their friends back home. After that, Earth would be overwhelmed. Unquestionably. Even without the S.H.I.E.L.D. machine, the Rifts could surely figure out something to do with their group. Perhaps they would just juice them like a lemon, and even that might bring on the worst. "Sue told us to turn around," Rachel said slowly. "But we can't. If New York is set on fire, our entire world will be filled with those things." Everyone looked confused. Rachel met Santana's eyes when she said, "Fire is energy. It takes energy for them to appear here."

"Shit," Santana said and rubbed her eyes. All of them had scrubbed their faces before bed. No one's hair was styled, no makeup was on. Even those in their shrapnel-shielding costumes weren't wearing masks. It was just them, bare. "But we don't even know where they _are._ "

"I know," Finn said dully and shivered. "It's telling me where to go."

"We can't trust it," Santana immediately said. "Finn's possessed by some creepy evil thing. That is the exact definition of 'when you don't trust someone.'"

"Actually," Kurt said sadly, and looked at Finn's pale face, "this is exactly when we should trust it. Because it wants us there so someone can try to grab us. That's the better option for them. Blowing up the city is just a band-aid in comparison. It wouldn't steer us wrong. They can't drain someone if we never get close."

"There's something we could do that would solve everything," Tina said quietly. Something about her calm, measured tone drew everyone's attention, even though it should have been too quiet to notice. "We're thirty thousand feet in the air and they can only drain us if we're alive."

Realization sunk in, person by person, and the group stared at her with every expression from grim acceptance to fear. Though Rachel hated the idea, she couldn't argue that Tina didn't have a point. Puck, though, looked angry at the mere suggestion. "Hell no," he snapped. "Are you insane?"

As Mike stared at her in disbelief, Tina explained, "Shelby put the world at risk because she was scared of dying. Of being dead. Meanwhile, Sue was ready to sacrifice herself to keep us safe, and...." She swallowed. "And I guess she did." Their collective act of pretending that Sue's dead body wasn't just a dozen feet away wobbled uncertainly for a few painful seconds. "I'm just saying. Are we better than Shelby?"

"We're trying to save people," Quinn said. "Not hurt them. If they blow up New York and start pouring through, and we're not around? They're still going to start doing whatever they can to harvest what this world has to offer. It might not be as good as us, but they'll destroy it all the same to take what they _can_ find. And it'll start with Beth."

"And think about who else is there, Tina," Mercedes said, teary-eyed. Rachel looked around the cabin and saw Kurt and Puck in similar states. Clearly, none of them would be willing to write off any of the abducted people. She had no idea if their decision made them heroes or unspeakably selfish. The label probably depended upon whether or not they won.

"Okay," Tina said, not willing to argue. Now that they were past the first, tense seconds, Rachel saw that Tina didn't seem particularly set on the idea of sacrificing themselves for the greater good. (Or at least, a lesser evil.) "I just wanted to point it out."

"I'm glad you decided that," Carole said from the pilot's seat. Her voice shook on odd syllables. "Because I wouldn't have set the plane down, anyway." She took a few steadying breaths. "Finn, sweetie? How are you doing?"

"Scared," he said in a whisper too soft for her to hear. Rachel and Kurt each took one of his hands and after a quick, wavering smile at Rachel, Finn zeroed in on his brother. Rachel didn't mind that, as she knew Kurt was probably a beacon in the darkness of Finn's Rift-clouded self; his thoughts were always the easiest for Finn to read. After a few beats, Finn raised his voice and said, "Mom? I can tell you where to go."

"Prepare to enter coordinates," Carole said to Artie. Even from the back of the plane, Rachel could tell that the woman was just barely holding herself together. "Okay, honey."

"The northwest part of Staten Island," Finn said. "There are a lot of big, open fields. Look for a building with a bunch of vents on its roof, and blue light coming out of a grating."

As Carole nodded and conferred with Artie, Quinn laughed thinly. "Of course. Somewhere people forget about. That's why Finn thought of it like that: he knew that everyone forgot me over there."

The network of lights below them thickened like capillaries becoming arteries. Occasional streetlights gave way to massive freeways. They were close. Rachel felt sweat bead on the back of her neck. "Making our approach," Carole said as they began to descend. For a short while, it felt like their approach to JFK for Nationals. "Moving into vertical descent mode." Rachel's stomach, already queasy, flipped further as their high-tech plane descended directly toward the ground.

When they were almost on the ground, half a mile from the facility that Carole had located and then veered away from, the instruments screeched. The plane tilted wildly, and over their screams, Carole yelled for them to hang on as she brought them safely to earth. "We just... we passed through something right there," she said, gulping for air. "It made everything go wild."

"I remember that I couldn't contact them last time," Artie said uncertainly. "From my house, I mean. My New York house. There was some sort of freaky energy field." 

Carole tensed and checked her instruments. "I can't reach S.H.I.E.L.D. I can't get backup. God, I'm out of practice. _Stupid._ I should have asked in the air. We're right _here_ and I can't ask for help. Artie, do you think you can punch through the field?"

"I can try," Artie said as all of them began to slip off the plane. Rachel supposed that was the best they could hope for. "Uh, guys... just... have your communicators on. They should work, since we're all inside the field together." 

"Sounds like you wanted to say 'don't die,'" Puck corrected. Artie shrugged helplessly as they left him behind.

They made their way across the pitch-black meadow in silence, broken only by crickets and the distant thrum of high-capacity powerlines. It felt like their first night examining their powers, a seeming decade earlier. When they inched over a small rise and saw the facility's security lights ahead of them, Finn smirked and Rachel knew in an instant that it wasn't him any more. "Now that you're here, I guess they can kill those three." He shuddered, put a palm to his forehead, and breathed deeply. "Sorry."

"You have to fight it off, Finn," Rachel said gravely. "If you don't, and if it takes over... you could send out a telepathic alarm. Everyone here would hear you."

After another long breath, Finn closed his eyes and nodded. With consideration, Rachel noticed that he'd turned straight toward Kurt, even without seeing the people around him. "Kurt," she asked quietly. "Can you anchor him? All the time? It sounds like his telepathic shields are absolutely shattered. It's obvious that he's latching on to you."

"Sure," Kurt said, swallowing. "Hold on to my mind, all right, Finn?" When he laughed, it sounded pained and nervous. "This time, I give you full permission to dig in as deeply as you want."

Puck met his eyes. "If he freaks out again and he's inside your brain...."

"Then it happens," Kurt said and thought that was clearly that. Though agonized, Puck didn't argue. "Let's hurry," Kurt said and hugged himself. "If that thing inside Finn wasn't kidding about... about what it said...." He trailed off, unable to finish, and looked ready to cry at the thought of the hostages.

Reassured that Kurt was steadying Finn, Rachel turned her attention back to the facility. Their group sank behind the low rise, shielded by bushes, as she studied it through a gap in the leaves. How were they going to get inside? It wasn't as if the place swarmed, but she could make out dull-eyed guards here and there. Shelby had mindwiped not only S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, but also police officers, random locals... anyone who might serve as a sufficiently meaty body to stand in-between her and her destiny. Given another day or two, Shelby's effort would have been discovered. She couldn't expect that she could steal away dozens of people, maybe more, and have that go unnoticed. 

But one of those people might well be empowered via Beth's energy in very short order, now that Jesse had failed and they would have to try again. Or the next attempt would make the machine backfire, New York would perish, and the world would fall apart a bit more slowly. There was no time to wait for a natural discovery of what had happened and where the brainwashed people had gone.

Rachel's powers weren't the most spectacular of the group. She'd made enormous mistakes. If she was going to be worth anything, she had to show that, if nothing else, she _could_ be a leader when the situation called for it. She'd assumed the leadership position was hers by right. Now it was time to earn it. "Tina," Rachel said after that thought. "I know you can make people feel scared or pleased from a distance, right?"

Tina nodded.

"Can you put them to sleep? Not knock them completely out, but make them feel tired? Like they'd think it was just getting late, and they're bored and sleepy?"

Blinking, Tina considered that, and then nodded again. "Yes, I think so. Brains work like that. Um, I don't really want to drain the plane, because they might need it for the signal to contact S.H.I.E.L.D. So let me go to a car? Maybe?" She shrugged. "They must have a parking lot somewhere, and I can do a few brains at a time with one car battery."

"No," Rachel said thoughtfully. She glanced at where Finn had started clutching Kurt's shoulder. They all had to work together. She could finally see how their powers fit together in a perfect puzzle, like they'd tried to do with their small group missions. It was clear, now. "We need to hit them all with one strike if we're going to slip in. Going back and forth like that... we'll be seen, and it'll take too much time."

"Okay, but where am I going to get that much energy?" Tina asked. Rachel was pleased to see that she didn't feel like she couldn't _hold_ that much power at once, simply that she didn't know where to find it.

"Can you absorb any sort of energy?" Rachel asked. When Tina considered that and nodded, Rachel smiled and turned to Mercedes. "Like, say, an incredibly powerful energy beam?"

After a second, Mercedes smiled back. "I'm not gonna do it if I'm gonna hurt her, but... would I hurt you?"

Tina shook her head, grinning back. "It's just energy, I should be fine."

"Okay," Mercedes said. Her hands started glowing and she ducked low against the ground, well-hidden by the bushes and curves of the earth. "Pulling me out to wail at the _beginning_ this time, huh?" she asked as the power crept past her wrists. If not for her obvious fear about what could happen to Sam and to all of them, she might have sounded good-natured about the whole thing.

As she waited, Rachel made her way to Kurt and Finn. Her hand rested protectively on Finn's back and she said, "Just hold on, Finn. Once we fix this and get Beth away from here, then you won't have to try so hard. We'll get S.H.I.E.L.D. and get you help, and everything will be fine. You'll see."

"I'm not a leader," Finn said quietly. "You are. I'm not. Everything has just been handed to me. I... I don't deserve it. What life was like for us in New York, how Kurt pointed out that I just get automatically considered for _everything_... but I haven't done anything. I couldn't even fight back this thing in my head enough to stop from shooting Sue. My big heroic moment was to shoot her _sooner._ "

"We can have this conversation later, Finn," Kurt said insistently. "Right now, focus on staying as yourself. Okay? Both of us love you, and you will prove yourself tonight. You will be strong and reliable and everything you think you aren't. You don't have to have people hail you as 'a leader' for that. Just stay here with us."

"We do, Finn," Rachel said. "We love you. We don't care about you being a leader right now. We just want you to hold on and be safe. We're going to get _everyone_ out of this, do you hear me?" She caught an odd edge to Kurt's expression after that, and asked, "Kurt?"

"Tina?" Kurt slowly asked. "How long do you think people will stay sleepy?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "Maybe five minutes, maybe half an hour. Either way, we'll be able to get the jump on them."

"Yep. Just give me a little bit more, and I'll be ready," Mercedes said as she charged up.

Tina added, "And we don't know if it'll affect any Rifts hanging around in there. So if we want to get inside, we'll have to move quickly, or they might pick up on people dozing off. Even if people pass out for half an hour, we'd still get noticed by the creepy aliens."

Rachel inhaled and nodded. It sounded rather serious, put like that.

"Rachel," Kurt said, "if I can take your communicator so Artie can wake me up, then I can get inside and save Blaine, Sam, and Lauren."

"No way," Santana instantly said. "Are you nuts?"

"If the guards are mostly asleep," Kurt said, "then I can get to wherever they're holding Blaine and the others." He saw the immediate protests. "I know I can do this. I did it before. That's how we broke into the first place: I went in."

"We're going to stay out of that machine by sticking together," Mercedes said. "Kurt, I want to rescue Sam, but you getting captured is the exact opposite of helpful. For everyone. For the _world._ "

"I won't get caught," Kurt said confidently. He turned to Finn. "Because Finn is going to stay latched onto my mind. Which means that he's going to be safe, secure, and _him._ And in return, he'll keep an eye out for anyone coming near me."

"This seems really risky," Brittany said, hugging herself awkwardly.

"Rachel... Anthem just said that no one is going to die." Kurt flicked his eyes toward her. "If they know we're coming, then the three of them won't have much time left. Because whatever's in Finn said they were willing to kill them." 

"You shouldn't do this," Puck said. He reached out for Kurt's hand and then forced himself back. Seeing the anticipated comment, he continued, "I love Lauren and you'd be saving her, too. But going off on your own? Saying you'll be right back? This is horror movie central." 

"I am going to save all of them," Kurt said. It didn't sound like it was up for discussion, and Rachel had the distinct feeling that they might have to knock Kurt out to stop his big plans.

As the protest began to build, Quinn took a deep breath and turned to Kurt. "S-Sue told us not to be alone. Let me go with you. I trust them to get to Beth." A quick look over her shoulder said that she'd best not regret that.

Though he didn't seem averse to the idea, Kurt said, "You're tiny, but are you flexible enough? I know, Cheerios practices, but I also remember breaking into that first lab. How sharp those turns were. If I didn't have my powers...."

"I want to try something," Quinn said calmly. She glanced at Santana. "Santana and I have very similar powers, right? We're practically like mirror images." When she saw that Kurt was growing impatient, she quickly explained, "Santana's explored her power limits more, while I haven't pushed myself. So let me see if I can do... this." As the last words left her lips, Quinn's body faded into translucency. Above her collar and past her sleeves, she was perfect, pale ice. "No friction," Quinn laughed and kicked off her boots. Her voice sounded sharp and thin.

"All right," Kurt said and managed a nervous smile. "If you can bend almost far enough, then I can slide you. Good plan. Let's go."

"Wait," Rachel said. It felt like everything was spiraling out of control: first Sue, then Finn, and now they were splitting up. "I don't... how are you even getting in?"

"The roof," Kurt said confidently.

"How are you getting on the roof? How is Quinn?"

Kurt didn't hesitate. "I'll illusion Puck, he'll throw us up there, and you'll come grab him when you make your way inside. Or he'll run back. Fastball Special, remember?"

"I know where people are in the building," Finn said softly. "I don't know who's who, it's hard to focus on everything... I _can't_ focus on everything, but I can focus on Kurt. And I'll know if someone's near him." He met Kurt's eyes. "If you want to do this, then I'll help."

If this was some sort of misguided apology from Finn... Rachel didn't even know how to finish that sentence in her head. But she couldn't condemn Blaine, Sam, and Lauren to a likely death. Not when Kurt had already successfully assaulted one facility. Not when he had backup. Sue Sylvester might have been ready to kill Puck for the greater good, but Rachel couldn't just write off three lives, even if doing so would be so, so much wiser. "All right," she said and took off her communicator. There were others in the group who had them, she thought as she clipped it to Kurt's collar. "Stay safe."

"Come on," Kurt said, and motioned Quinn and Puck toward the facility. He made sure to keep a hold on both of their arms. After four steps into the night, they vanished.

* * *

"We're Gwen Stacy," Sam said as he hugged his knees to his chest. He rocked slightly where he sat on their cell's floor. His earlier enthusiasm for life was long gone, and he sounded increasingly hopeless the longer they were there.

They hadn't been killed immediately upon arrival. Once Blaine had worked through his most crippling fear, he tried to sort out the facts into some sort of reasonable picture. Fact: Jesse seemed to be working for someone and had only been carrying out orders. Fact: their significant others were very big targets and so the three of them were likely serving as bait. Fact: those significant others had no way of knowing whether they were alive or not, but yet, they still were.

If they hadn't been conveniently disposed of when Jesse was right there, Blaine doubted that they were going to be killed simply for the sake of it. He knew what it felt like to be a target. If Jesse had shot them, it would have felt like a natural conclusion to everything that had happened over the past months. But no: they were still alive. Maybe they had some other plans for them, or maybe they didn't care at all about the group so long as they lured in their targets, but they were still alive.

Lauren lifted the wrenched-off leg of a cot she'd disassembled, took a deep breath, and clanged it heavily against their door. It went flying from her hand to ricochet around their cell. She stared unhappily at the damage she'd failed to do. After cowering from her inadvertent attack on them, Blaine turned to Sam. "We're who?"

"Gwen Stacy." By that point, Sam seemed ready to disappear entirely into the shadows of his chosen corner. "Rachel had them read the story in the workbooks she made for everyone, but I already knew about her."

"All right, but who is she?" Blaine asked. He thought he sounded patient, considering everything.

Morosely, Sam answered, "Spider-Man's girlfriend, probably. He knew her, at least." 

At that, Lauren stopped frowning at the door and paid attention to Sam. 

Any light in Sam's eyes about heroes, superpowers, and grand stories had long since faded. If he'd been on a high earlier about how heroes had the potential had to be the very best, now he was lost in the lows of fearing they were facing the very worst. He knew all those stories and he was convinced they were living out those pages. "Long story short, she died because she was around a hero. A bad guy grabbed her. She got killed in the crossfire."

"What, so some damsel in distress?" Lauren instantly sneered, but even she sounded unsettled. After all, like Sam, she'd foolishly wanted the group to blow up Columbus for the most spectacular fight possible. She'd wanted laser beams and explosions and fireballs, while Blaine had worried about personal injuries and property damage. "I'm no damsel. I am never a freaking _damsel._ "

"We are," Sam said. He looked dizzy. "We're freaking damsels. We're going to get killed and shoved into a refrigerator to make our girlfriends and boyfriends sad. That's it. We're gonna get fridged."

Blaine would really love for Sam to stop speaking in tropes. He understood that Sam had clung to the idea of something greater that would fit right into the stories of his boyhood, but now his fantasy life meant that they were nothing more than extras in an even grander tragedy. No, Blaine didn't want to just be part of someone else's story. He would put his trust in Kurt and his friends to help the trio out of a situation entirely unique to them. They didn't _have_ to play out some role that Sam had read in some comic book. "Look," he said and knelt next to Sam. Quickly, he ran through his facts and logic about how they hadn't yet been killed, even though their deaths would go unnoticed.

"And?" Sam asked. He was still clearly convinced they were about to be 'fridged.' Bizarre term.

"If we're not already dead," Blaine said, and began to feel a sliver more confident as he acted confident for their sake, "then we're probably not going to _be_ dead."

"I'm not a _damsel_ ," Lauren nervously muttered to herself as she peered through the tiny inset in the door. She seemed incapable of simply waiting for assistance, and so began another futile attempt to break them free.

"We're going to be fine," Blaine said to both of them. Sam looked at him, and although he didn't entirely seem convinced, he wanted to believe what Blaine was saying. "We're going to be fine."

Some part of Blaine hated himself for lying, and hated the others for making him play the strong one when he would be entirely justified in curling up into a little ball of fear and never coming out again. But he fought back that part. He tried to keep the cell from losing itself to despair. They had to hold it together. They would be rescued, he would be safe, and everything would be fine. Kurt would come. Everyone would come. And it would be fine.

He could break down afterward, when he was safe.

* * *

"Tina will hit the whole facility," Kurt whispered. "So we'll probably be caught in the energy wave. Artie will send feedback to wake us up, and Puck? You need to either head for cover and I'll try to hide you the whole way, or find a safe place to collapse until they come near."

"Got it," Puck said and extended a hand like a ladder rung. He hesitated as Kurt moved into position. "Hey, so, uh... you remember."

"I remember," Kurt confirmed. They stared at each other for a long, intimate second. "I'm happy now."

"Yeah. I know."

"The two of us have... everything that happened in Ohio."

Puck swallowed. "Yeah. Know that, too."

"But way deep inside of you, where you hardly let anyone see," Kurt said with a soft smile, "there's a good guy. Don't forget him. I'm glad I didn't."

With a shuddering sigh of relief, Puck smiled like he'd been granted absolution. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but then shook his head. "Ready?"

"Ready," Kurt said and was thrown into the air like a javelin. His hands caught a narrow beam running along the roof and he used his momentum to arc up and over it, landing on the metal plating in absolute silence. Remembering himself, he unclipped his communicator and attached it to his ear, even though it smarted. The speaker aimed directly at his eardrum, that way. He then leaned over the edge and gestured for Quinn.

Even from up there, he could see her expression: you had _better_ catch me, Hummel. He wasn't any stronger than he'd once been, but they'd both been trained by Sue Sylvester. Not only was Kurt confident in his ability to catch her at the peak of a throw, but if he stumbled, Puck could catch her on the descent. He nodded and held his breath. A second later, Quinn's gloved hands latched tightly around his wrists and Kurt pulled her to the rooftop. They both waved at Puck, who pointed at the bush cover they'd come from. Kurt illusioned him as best he could as Puck sped back to the group.

He and Quinn were alone, then. "We'll find a vent," he whispered, "and then wait for Tina. I don't want to fall asleep in the middle of entry."

She nodded, and when the wave did hit they were in a safe place to fall. A pleasant, dreamy lassitude swept over them and Kurt found himself dropping to his knees. The world tilted further. Against his cheek, metal plating was still warm from the day's sunlight. It felt wonderful and welcomed after his long, impossible day. It _would_ be nice to just go to sleep and wake up the next day. Hopefully. Or maybe he'd be dead. Oh. Right.

One thin, shrill round of feedback screeched in his ear and Kurt clawed the communicator off his earlobe. Glaring at it, he archly returned it to his collar, silenced it, and shook Quinn awake. Time for the belly of the beast.

"This won't work," Kurt said as they were about to climb into the vent he'd opened. Just as he'd been about to slip inside it, he'd caught another glimpse of Quinn and realized he'd been a complete fool to agree to this plan.

"Why not?" Quinn asked impatiently.

"This is going to be tough for _me_ to bend my way through. And I'm pulling you. You might not have any friction, but that outfit still does."

She hesitated, looked distant for a second, and then nodded. "Okay," Quinn said as she began to unzip her outfit and peel it away from her body. Kurt stared at his feet as soon as he realized what was happening. Eventually her clothes fell to the roof, and his gaze inched back up. Quinn was a perfect nude statue. Although it was difficult to see in the dark, the few lights around them caught her translucent form and made it clear that she'd held onto every single detail of her fleshy body.

"You're blushing," Quinn said lightly. "And I did say I was Santana's counterpart with ice, right? Well, think of that accident she had with her costume."

"I didn't really expect this, is all," Kurt said. "Especially from you."

She took a beat to reply. "Neither of were happy about these powers. We tried to get out of them more than almost anyone. But now it's only the two of us who can save these lives, and that _has_ to happen. That's important, that matters, and that makes me feel like I matter. I don't know why I ever had a problem with what we are. Even if I don't normally plan to fight naked."

Kurt looked down into the black maw of the vent system, then turned back to Quinn. "Sue said that the two of us were the only ones with the personalities to be agents. Like her." His voice barely wobbled at her name. He knew that he was probably repressing his grief, just like he was repressing his fear over Finn and Blaine and a Beth-powered nuclear bomb. The comedown from all of this was going to be hell. "She said we're strong alone."

"But she also told us not to be alone," Quinn retorted. "So let's work together, be heroes, and save them."

"There's a good chance there's a security system in there that will shoot us full of holes or something," Kurt felt compelled to point out.

"And?" Quinn asked lightly. "It's not like I'll bleed out right now. You should look out, though."

That made Kurt giggle nervously and he nodded. With nothing more to be said, he took a deep breath, angled his body into the opening, and slowly released his full weight into the vent system. The metal under his feet protested and he readjusted his stance until it could bear him securely, without any tell-tale groans. His gloved hands served as a step for Quinn's icy foot, and soon they were slithering through the lungs of the building.

After two corners, the vents bent at what seemed like an impossible angle for anything but air. Kurt curved himself like a cat, wondering at one point where his spine had gone or why it wasn't protesting, and then reached out a hand for Quinn. She came less easily, but without any friction against the walls they managed to slide her back and forth like a car moving into a parking space just barely sized for it. And then she was in. They could make the turns.

Kurt didn't say "let's go." They both knew to move on, forward and down. And they both knew to stay absolutely silent.

* * *

_This is ridiculous,_ Rachel thought as they scurried toward the door, half-bent. At least the night shielded them, because Finn might as well not even be trying to conceal himself. They were untrained teenagers, let off their leashes by the death of their overseer, and now the only other woman who might be able to assist them was desperately occupied with trying to get help from someone else. Meanwhile, as Carole and Artie tried to contact S.H.I.E.L.D., their group had split up before they even entered the building.

And, if the Rifts could sense Tina's energy, they'd be wondering what was going on. Oh, Rachel hoped very much that she really had figured out how to bring everyone together like a glorious symphony, instead of being headed for another failure like the Nationals stage.

"They can't," Finn said. He must be catching stray thoughts from her with his shields down, as well as having the thoughts of that thing inside him. "Psychic powers connect really easily to them, but Tina's an energy-sucker like them. She just moves it around, though; she doesn't hurt anything. They suck it _out_ of our dimension, and it makes everything go all wobbly and weird, and then things blow up." Rachel stared at him blankly and Finn clarified, "Tina's energy is too much like them. They don't feel it at all."

"Okay, good," Rachel said, barely reassured as they waited outside the door. The facility loomed above them, pale and generic and terrifying. How could something so unremarkable hold within it the potential end of the world? "Artie," she said as she leaned in to Santana's shoulder and the communicator clipped there, "have you popped the door open, yet?"

After a pause, Artie quietly replied, "But I thought getting in touch with S.H.I.E.L.D. was the big priority."

"Never mind, we'll figure it out." 

"You can do it," Santana said encouragingly to Brittany. "Just... make the lock go away."

"I don't want to," Brittany said and swallowed. "I'll make it blow up in our faces or something."

"Any chance your shields can muffle sound?" Santana asked Mercedes after a long sigh.

"I can give it a shot," Mercedes said, and after a quick experiment of snapping her fingers inside a glowing sphere, nodded. When Puck ripped the steel door off its hinges, no one came running from around a corner to catch them. The dark maw of the hallway loomed before them, lined with institutional doors and gleaming monitors. They were in.

"Move carefully but quickly," Rachel said in a low voice as they inched through the first hallway. The place simultaneously gave the impression of being infinitely old and impossibly high-tech. It was new and shiny and designed by brilliant engineers to extract infinite amounts of energy, but that energy felt more ancient than their entire world. "We need to find Beth and get her out of that machine. Listen for a crying baby. They might not have fed her all day, or changed her... she's probably crying." She saw Puck's look of distress and reiterated, "If we get Beth out, then we can start fighting at full tilt if need be. Until then, every spent second is dangerous."

"I can go on ahead and look," Mike said. "I can fly, so they won't hear footsteps or anything. I won't wake anyone up."

"Can you brake, now?" Santana asked dubiously.

"Most of the time," Mike said after a second's hesitation.

"Go with him," Rachel said to Brittany, sighing. She didn't want them to split up any more. She didn't. But it _did_ make sense to cover more ground, and their fliers might as well work together. Tina and Santana looked ready to protest, but they gave up and said their farewells with embraces and deep kisses. 

"How do you think they're doing?" Mercedes asked Puck as they watched the duo speed off, just a foot below the pseudo-ceiling made of industrial vents and pipes.

"They're probably... are you asking about the air vents or the holding cell?"

"Holding cell," Mercedes said.

"Oh." Puck rubbed his head as Rachel rubbed small circles on Finn's back and told him to hold on to Kurt as often as he needed. "Uh. I mean, they're probably just sitting in there."

"And the people in the air ducts?" Mercedes asked next. "'Cause you're obviously thinking about...." Indeed, there were no two people more tricky for Puck to worry about than Kurt and Quinn. Complicated didn't begin to describe it.

His jaw worked for a while. "I hope no one hears them," Puck said quietly.

"Let's try this way," Tina said, returning from peeking around a corner. "Worst case scenario, I can just drain the lights."

Nodding, Rachel followed her. She stepped lightly around a sleeping guard in a policeman's uniform, and tried not to jostle his gun.

* * *

Kurt pulled his invisible head back up into the vent and dropped his disguise. They'd checked the hallways on the third, fourth, and fifth sub-basements. Each time, the space had clearly not held any sort of brig for troublesome individuals. But now, finally, the sixth sub-basement had doors clearly marked as holding cells, and Finn had raised a warning. A guard dozed peacefully outside one of those tiny rooms.

Unwilling to talk in case Sleeping Beauty might wake, Kurt held up his hand and indicated that Quinn should wait inside the air duct. He slithered out of the hole, invisible again, and crept toward the door. The man there was solidly built and looked like he was probably a security guard or officer caught by Shelby's telepathic, Rift-enhanced web. He reminded Kurt of Burt, more than a little.

Carefully avoiding the man where he dozed against the wall, weaving like he might fall over, Kurt put his ear to the small hole in the door.

"They're going to come for us," Blaine said inside the cell.

"You keep saying that," Sam said. "And I'm telling you, this story is going to have a Gwen Stacy."

"We're not just characters in one of your comic books, Sam," Blaine snapped, sounding uncharacteristically tense and wonderfully _alive_. Kurt's heart sped as much from joy as fear. "Let's deal with what's in front of us."

Right, then. He'd found them. Kurt wasn't sure what to do next. Clearly, he had to get rid of the guard, but he had no idea how he was going to get the door open. His swords cut through flesh and bone—

_Coach Sylvester_

—not metal. Kurt took a deep breath and just barely kept himself from sighing it out. He couldn't get Quinn's help, because he'd have to keep her invisible. Kurt knew his reserves were limited and they couldn't run out at a bad time. That also meant that he should stop making himself invisible for much longer, lest he burn off energy he didn't have.

It was time for the straightforward approach. Pulling his hand back, Kurt clocked the man across the head as hard as he could with the hilt of one sword. The not-Burt officer swayed, groaned, and Kurt hit him again to make sure he'd go down.

"Sorry," Kurt whispered when he stared at where the man's scalp bled. He crept back to the vent and whispered for Quinn, and they made their way back together. "Hey," Kurt said softly through the small air vent in the door.

The trio, who'd gone still at the sound of their guard being attacked, stood. "Kurt?" Blaine asked, just as softly.

"Quinn and I are here. Stay quiet, we'll get you out."

"I _told_ you they'd come," Blaine said smugly. When Kurt peered through the vent, he saw Sam about ready to collapse with relief. 

"How are we getting in?" Quinn asked as she studied the door. 

Nervous, Kurt glanced up and down the hallway and then illusioned her, as well. He didn't trust his reserves to last, but he also didn't trust everyone in the facility to be dozing like that guard had. Quinn said nothing as her hands vanished from view and they continued their conversation invisibly. "I have no idea. These swords would be a little big to serve as a lockpick."

"Okay, I have a plan," Quinn said after a second. Kurt heard a faint sliding sound and eventually realized that she was moving her hand up and down the door. From what he could place, she seemed to be right in front of the seam where the door joined the wall. Then, ice came. Kurt couldn't predict where it would be and could already feel a headache threatening, and so he didn't illusion the ice spreading across the metal. He hoped whatever she did, she finished quickly.

"Potholes," Quinn said shortly. "Ice gets into tiny cracks in the road and it expands. Plain old water can tear apart asphalt." The door groaned as ice began to fill the space between it and its frame. Kurt looked up and down the hall again. Surely, they would soon be discovered. 

"Hurry up," he said when he became too nervous.

"I am," Quinn said tightly.

Eventually the lock wrenched loose, too loudly for his taste, and Kurt pried the door open. As soon as he stepped into the cell, lunging toward Blaine, he dropped his illusions and wrapped his arms around his warm and alive boyfriend. "Are you okay?" Kurt asked, checking Blaine over.

"Oh my _god_ it's good to see you. We're fine. Scared out of our minds," Blaine admitted, "but fine. Are you?" He kissed him, hard, before Kurt could answer.

After that, Kurt nodded. "Yes. We need to get back to the group or get out of the building. Either one, just so long as nobody catches us. Come on." Kurt gestured to Sam and Lauren, who smiled broadly at the sight of him, and then turned to the door. Quinn was dragging the unconscious guard into the cell and obviously having a rough time of it. Kurt helped her work and was pleased to hear the man faintly groan when they propped him against a far corner. _Oh, good. He's not dead._ A trail of blood followed the man's path, and with a frown Kurt asked, "Any way you can use your powers to scrub that off?"

As Quinn inspected the blood trail, Kurt considered the man himself. He needed to keep the guard from raising an alarm once he came to. After one quick second of considering his sword and how he could assure that silence permanently, Kurt shuddered with horror and sought other options. "Sam," he said when he looked at the trio's clothing, "I need your shirt."

Blaine, despite his obvious and crippling fear, actually managed to look bemused at that. "Woven fabric," Kurt explained as he took the shirt and began slicing it into neat strips. "You're in a knit, Blaine. I'm worried that he would just stretch it out as he struggled." Moving efficiently, Kurt bound and gagged the guard, then propped him up in the corner again. "There," he said with satisfaction as he looked at his work.

Quinn slipped back into the cell and Kurt dropped her invisibility again. "The blood's all cleaned up. Enough that you wouldn't notice it at a glance, at least. And Sam doesn't have a shirt on."

Sam, Lauren, and Blaine all blinked back at her. "You're naked," Sam pointed out in return.

"I don't know if naked _ice_ really counts," Blaine said, although he was clearly a bit off-balance. Lauren simply furrowed her eyebrows.

"Long story. Let's go." Quinn looked at Kurt, and in unison they began proposing strategies.

"I don't know how much longer I can do illusions, and especially not for multiple people," Kurt said, "so you and I will scout out in front. I'm sneaky and I can put up a blind if I absolutely have to."

"And it's hard to see me," agreed the translucent Quinn. "You three, only follow us when we say it's okay."

"What are your shoes like?" Kurt said and began to inspect their feet. Since they couldn't defend themselves, they might need to run. With displeasure, he saw that all of them lacked footwear; Lauren and Blaine had bare feet, while Sam had on a pair of socks with a hole over a big toe. Even frowning, that meant that Kurt's attention was back on his boyfriend, and he saw just how desperately Blaine was holding back his fear. Even with a rescue party there, the boy he loved was trembling. Blaine wanted to be out of there. He wanted to be safe. "Let's go," Kurt said gently. "I'm going to get you home safely, okay? I promise."

"I believe you," Blaine said, exhaling shakily. "Let's go."

With a quick nod to Quinn, Kurt set out through the hallways. He could hear them following and Kurt became unpleasantly aware of the volume of every single footstep that Blaine, Sam, and Lauren made. His powers made him a ninja. Quinn was a masterful cheerleader and gymnast. They were neither.

With any luck, Kurt thought as he peered around a corner and verified that it was safe to move, the others wouldn't trip any alarms. So long as they stayed quiet, they should be fine.

They should be just fine, he told himself, and tried to believe it.

* * *

"I'm about to lose my mind," Puck said as the group made their slow way through the facility. Finn looked around them, like someone might hear, but there was nothing. So far, they'd been lucky. Brainwashed randoms from convenient neighborhoods weren't the best attack force.

"Don't say that," Finn said when he was assured that they weren't about to be attacked. He managed to force a wobbly smile. "I'm the only person who gets to lose his mind."

With sympathy, Puck looked him over and asked, "Seriously, how are you holding up?" Rachel glanced back at the question. When Finn hesitated, Puck murmured, "We were friends, the four of us. Way before we knew anyone else. I don't know what went on in your head when you tried to paint me as the bad guy to Kurt, but we were friends. Me and Rachel are pissed at you, you and Kurt are pissed at me... it sucks. We both screwed up on some stuff. Big stuff." 

"Yeah," Finn said. He could feel the oil slick inside his head ooze against his weak shields. Nausea surged and he reached out quickly to the one warm, sure thing he could. After he'd clung to Kurt's unaffected mind long enough to steady himself, Finn opened his eyes and looked at Puck. "We did."

"You're not okay," Puck said needlessly.

"I'm dealing," Finn said. "We'll talk later. I... yeah. We have stuff to talk about." Rachel watched the two of them a while longer, her big brown eyes heavy with concern, and then gestured the group forward.

After they'd inched past another hallway intersection, Mike sped in with Brittany trailing him. He looked ready to shoot into the wall and Puck just barely snagged him in time. "We heard a baby," he said. "Down the hall, about... three turns to the right, and down a staircase."

"She's crying really loud," Brittany said, worried.

"Okay," Mercedes said. "Show us where to go."

"This has been weirdly easy," Santana said, eyes narrowed. "I don't like it. Something's about to go wrong." They crept down the next hallway, listening for any patrolling guards, and waited for the seemingly inevitable confirmation of her statement. Nothing came and they breathed a sigh of relief.

Artie's voice crackled on Santana's shoulder. "We've drilled a hole through the field. I seriously can't believe I pulled this off. I... yeah, I can't believe it. We can contact S.H.I.E.L.D. Mrs. Hudson... Hudson-Hummel... Mrs. Whatever is doing it now."

Everyone had been so tense, so fearful, that his sudden voice brought panic rather than reassurance. Rachel placed her hand lightly against her throat and breathed deeply. "Very good, Artie. Let us know when help is on the way. We're almost to Beth, so things should be all fixed soon."

As everyone nodded, Finn shifted uncomfortably and felt darkness oozing around inside his skull again. He'd been startled. Artie surprised him. When he was surprised, he was distracted and things could get inside. He needed to center himself, quickly and totally, or that passenger would use his telepathy to scream an alarm. Without checking what was happening to Kurt, Finn reached out for his brain and wrapped himself around it like a needy child.

* * *

"Come on," Kurt said as he slid through a nest of security lasers, and then gestured the others forward after disarming the panel on the far side. "We're actually making pretty good time," he said happily. And they made quite a team: him, completely suited up and with swords; Quinn, icy and naked; Sam, shirtless and overwhelmed; and Blaine and Lauren, who clearly just wanted to get the hell out of there and were not going to complain so long as that happened.

Another nest of lasers rested around the next corner. Kurt rolled his eyes impatiently. Just because they were six stories down in the guts of an incredibly secret government research lab didn't mean they had to be _so_ intense with the security. "Wait here," he said and began to contort his body through the beams.

Midway through, Finn grabbed his brain and locked around it, tight. _Not right now,_ Kurt thought in a panic as he tried to focus on not letting his body brush those dangerous streaks of light. _Finn, give me five seconds._ But Finn didn't listen, and the back of Kurt's heel cut through a single laser.

The lights above their heads turned from harsh, unforgiving sodium yellow into a hellish red. Light moves faster than sound. The alarms came a second later.

"Run," Lauren said, and set off where they'd been headed as fast as her feet would move. Everyone followed without any more concern for stealth.

* * *

"Fuck!" Santana said as lights started flashing. Under their red glare, she melted into fire. "Let's grab the kid and get the hell out of here!"

"They're going to know where they are," Finn said. "Oh god, I did it _again._ I distracted him. I just... it would have taken me over, it would have used me to broadcast, and—"

Rachel kissed him, hard. "Finn, if you don't hold it together I will kiss you again or slap you. Tell me which would be more effective."

Finn actually considered that even as he looked ready to pass out. "I think it likes pain, so no slapping."

"Okay," she said and kissed him again. "Now focus on Kurt as much as you can, and let's get Beth out of that machine. Everything will be fine, then."

"They tripped security," Puck said distantly. "Didn't they? It wasn't us. We didn't do anything. That means the Rifts know where they are, not us."

"Maybe," Rachel said helplessly. "Finn, is anything heading toward them?"

Everyone turned to Finn, and he swallowed. "Yeah. Oh god."

"They need backup. They need...." Puck closed his eyes. "Swear to me you will get Beth out of there. They need someone fast who can get from Point A to Point B, even if it means punching the hell out of some doors."

"Mike, go with him," Rachel said, and they both sped toward the nearest stairwell. Everything was falling apart, just like with Jacob. What were they _doing_ , she asked herself as she ran. They weren't prepared for this, no more than they'd been to compete on a national stage. In May, she'd disappointed her choir under the spotlights. In July, Rachel Berry's foolishness would destroy the world.

The first shadow appeared under the flashing red lights and Santana whipped a fireball squarely into its head. It shrieked, a horrible sound of rending metal-on-metal, and then vanished into nothing. It must not have materialized fully, Rachel decided distantly as they sped toward the sound of Beth's cries. Maybe they were short on energy, having done all the experiments and testing with Beth and Jesse. Maybe they would be easier to fight. Maybe.

They pounded down a staircase and rounded a corner, and a cavernous grey space opened around them. They'd emerged between two arcs of computer banks, where screens blared warnings about power surges and unstable fields. A dimensional portal and its generator covered the far wall. Like two outstretched arms, metal arcs held crackling energy between them. At the center of it, suspended by the field in defiance of gravity, was Beth. Her small, soft face was red and desperate. She barely paused for breath as she wailed. Rachel could see a streak running down her leg; she'd been left there alone for a long time, abandoned inside a machine designed to kill her.

"Oh my god," Mercedes said, gulping. 

"Okay," Santana said and snapped out of her fire form. "So... how do we get her out of there without getting sucked in, too?"

With that question hanging over them, they all stared at the machine in front of them and wondered what they were supposed to do.

* * *

Carole Hudson-Hummel had tears running down her cheeks, but her voice was steady. She never should have let the kids go off on their own, even if it was to save twenty million people. Or the world. Her sons were in there. They were each worth the entire world, all on their own. "Anticipated arrival time requested."

Artie gritted his teeth and constantly adjusted dials that she didn't understand. The line was static-filled, but it stayed open.

"Agents are suiting up and heading out from the helicarrier now. Give them five minutes."

_Damn. Damn._ "Should I assist inside?" Carole asked. 

"Negative. They are capable of defending themselves and we need you to maintain contact with us. We cannot pin your transmission. We need exact guidance or it'll be half an hour."

"There's someone else in here," Carole said desperately. "He can keep it open and tell you where to go."

"I really can't," Artie said. Even the distraction of speaking those few words ruined his work, and it took a good five seconds before the line cleared again.

"All right," Carole said dully. "We're in northwestern Staten Island...."

* * *

_Thank you, Quinn Fabray,_ Kurt thought as he sliced the head off another half-there Rift. If she hadn't offered to come along, he would have been completely overwhelmed. Her long-range attacks were the only thing keeping them from being swarmed; those that did get through, he handled. His powers were useful and flexible, and so their group had relied more heavily on him than most in their early days. Shade's powers were human-scaled, though. The Black Widow could handle more subterfuge than Thor, but when the bad guys came screaming out of the night with powers of their own, Thor's hammer was a lot more useful than the Widow's guns.

Another enormous ice spear rocketed down the hallway, and Quinn nodded at the hit.

In his mind, there was no twin brother and all the history there. There was no long-lost love. There was no just-rescued love. There were only his swords and the paths they carved. When he turned to slice off another head, Kurt stumbled and nearly fell before he corrected himself. He was tired.

"Keep moving forward," Quinn said. "Once we get up to where the others are, we'll be fine."

"Yeah," Sam said, sounding like a funeral dirge. " _Sure_ we will."

"We'll be fine," Blaine said. He sounded terrified.

"I want a... a bat," Lauren said as they moved down the hallway. "A crowbar, freaking _something._ A gun."

"A gun would be nice," Kurt agreed. Would he have mastery over guns, like he did for swords? Maybe he couldn't kill them at a distance, like Quinn, but he could at least slow them down. For all that his powers seemed so flexible and useful, right then Kurt would trade them all for simply being able to nuke people from the far end of the hallway. _Thank you, Quinn, thank you._

With just a second's warning as panels opened in the ceiling, the building reminded them that guards weren't its only security. Kurt dodged the bullets instinctively, not even aware of what he was doing.

The targeting ignored the thermal void that was Quinn Fabray.

Once again, sound took a second to reach him. Two voices were crying out in pain.

Lauren stood where she'd been shielded at the back of their group, frozen with shock and fear. Sam was curled around himself on the floor. Kurt barely noticed them. All he could see was Blaine clutching a hand to his side, and the red seeping between his fingers.

_No,_ Kurt thought dumbly, unable to move. He'd said he'd get him out. He'd promised. This couldn't be happening.

As Quinn took out the guns with a quick ball of ice, Kurt lunged toward Blaine. "Oh my god, say something," he demanded. If Blaine could talk, he wasn't dead.

"Hurts," Blaine said. His fingers curled around his wound, and with a grimace he forced his hand flat again. "I don't...."

"You don't what?" Kurt asked frantically. Blaine couldn't die. Kurt had promised he wouldn't. He'd said Blaine would be _fine._ It was impossible for Blaine to have suffered through all of this because he was unfortunate enough to know Kurt. No. Blaine didn't deserve that. The only acceptable option was that _he was fine._ "Blaine, sweetie?" Kurt said and stroked his face like he might break him. "You need to keep talking to me." He was only distantly aware of Lauren and Quinn checking on Sam.

"I want to go home," Blaine said. He sounded like a child.

"I will get you home," Kurt said, feeling tears stream down his cheeks. With a few whispered words of apology, he lifted Blaine onto his shoulder. Blaine cried out in pain and Kurt staggered under his weight, but failure wasn't an option. "Lauren, carry Sam," Kurt said. Lauren looked satisfied to finally be doing something she was good at, and arranged Sam over her shoulder as he groaned, too. "Quinn, you're going to have to cover us all."

"Right," she said and set off again. She could, Kurt insisted to himself. Quinn and her amazing, high-level powers could save the day. She hadn't sounded incredibly resigned, there. They would be fine. Because Blaine had not just gotten mortally wounded, and was not about to die.

* * *

Rachel had to figure out what to do. She was the leader. She could do this. She could—

"Santana, Brittany, kill," Rachel said as she saw two Rifts lunge out of thin air. She took care of a third herself. 

Right. They were at the heart of it all and were sure to get more attention with every passing minute. They couldn't just wait for S.H.I.E.L.D. to help them. Worst of all, if S.H.I.E.L.D. did launch a huge attack on the facility, the machine might backfire. That gun was loaded, and Beth was no less deadly a bullet for her size. Who knew what unwittingly dangerous tricks the agent assault group might pull, unaware of the tripwire they could jostle?

"It's right on top of my brain," Finn whimpered and clawed at his head. "It's like... it's me under a layer of this _thing_."

"Whatever you do," Tina told Mercedes very seriously, "don't shoot more energy into that portal dealie."

"Duh," Mercedes said.

Rachel wanted to slap her forehead. "Tina," she asked. "If you stay back here—" One of her notes blew apart another half-formed Rift. "Can you drain energy from the wires? Destabilize the field?"

"Sounds like a plan," Tina said and started prying apart the nearest box on the wall, searching for the right power cable.

Santana's communicator crackled, and they all listened as she lobbed energy at any new intruders. "Let me help," Artie said. "S.H.I.E.L.D.'s almost here. They know where we are, so I can help."

After a little more searching and a few false tries, Tina's hand closed around a thick cable. Her eyes lit up, unearthly beautiful and frightening as they glowed. As her eyes gleamed ever-brighter, the overhead lights dimmed around them. Computers started flickering with garbage, and their old readouts and warnings were replaced by the lyrics to some of Artie's favorite songs. 

And the portal before them warped, flashed, flickered. Beth fell out of it, straight toward the floor, twenty feet down.

Instinctively Rachel reached out for her, but knew the only thing she could do was blow Beth apart before she hit the floor. Mike and Puck were gone and so were their hopes of catching the girl.

"No," Finn gritted out and pried a hand away from his head. He held out that hand to Beth and purple energy wrapped around his fingers, then her. Beth slowed and came to a stop a foot off the floor, and then dropped gently to it. After a quietly stunned second, Beth started crying again, and pounded her tiny fists against the concrete.

Finn staggered. His eyes were out of focus and blood trailed from his nose. "Now I need... but Kurt's barely awake, I...." He dropped to his knees, shaking. Telekinesis was still aimed at Beth, even though she no longer needed it. Dazed as he was, he couldn't understand that he'd saved her.

Almost lazily, the unstable, crackling tendrils of energy behind Beth caught hold of Finn's lingering telekinetic net. It was a map and they followed it across the room. At the first brush of light against Finn's leg, even energy-knowledgable Tina frowned and hesitated; it felt like they'd won already. Then Finn moved an inch forward, and a foot, and then he was dragged past the computer banks as he struggled in earnest. Terror clawed Rachel's spine and Finn was mute with it as, like some mythical sea monster, the portal itself began to drag him toward its field. 

They tried to stop him. But no one could.

Finn was about to be taken into the device that could rip out all of his fully-formed powers. And no one could prevent it, Rachel knew as her entire body went numb. No one. They were going to reach into his mind, pull out his energy, and send it right back to their dimension. And then it would all end.

Rachel's eyes widened. She could hear Finn's voice echo in her memory: that thing was on top of his brain. "Finn!" she screamed. "Let it take you over!"

Finn met her eyes. His were enormous, but even wracked with fear, he still trusted her. In the next second the figure before them was not Finn Hudson, but something dark and cruel that laughed at their failure. They shouldn't have been so stupid as to come there. They should have let their friends die. Let New York die. At least they would have lived for a little while longer.

Another beam of energy shot out of the machine, straight into the top of Finn's head.

The second it started draining him, the bolt turned pitch black. Energy void struck energy void and the howling of a million distant voices erupted. A Rift was pulled up out of Finn's head. Even as it struggled, the mindless portal pulled it inexorably forward. A black hole was about to meet a black hole.

"Artie!" Rachel yelled into Santana's communicator, and then Santana took over.

"Ruin that shit!"

The screens flashed. The unstable machine was pushed just a little more. A tiny nudge.

The energy turned white again, and Rachel was blinded by it.

* * *

Kurt took another slow step and his knee buckled when the building shook. The part of Finn inside his mind was cold and distant. He just managed to put his weight against the wall instead of falling.

He couldn't do it.

It had been the longest day of his life. He'd only gotten a couple hours' sleep. He'd already been running on little more than adrenaline, and that was fading. Blaine needed Kurt to save his life and Kurt couldn't do it.

After Kurt forced himself to take another step, he fell to his knees.

"Kurt?" Blaine asked weakly. He didn't even groan from being jostled. "You can't carry me any more, can you?"

"Of course I can," Kurt lied. "I just need to... Lauren will carry you both for a little while, and then I'll take over again." He looked over to Lauren, his savior, and his tiny hope died. 

Lauren Zizes was strong. That didn't mean, after all she'd gone through, that she was up for carrying around two nearly full-grown bodies. Even Sam had her tired out, as much as she tried to cover it. Sam Evans was a big guy, solid with muscle. Lauren was stronger than Kurt, but Sam was heavier than Blaine. When she met Kurt's eyes, he knew that she wouldn't be able to go for too much longer, either.

_No._

"Quinn," Kurt said desperately, having moved past logic. "I can... I can fight. You have to take him, and then I'll fight, I just need to rest—"

"I can't carry him," Quinn said apologetically. "I can't. I'm sorry."

As Kurt's chest began to ache, and air heaved in and out, he put Blaine on the floor. The floors down here were polished concrete, and were very slick. "Okay, okay, just hang on." Blaine pressed his hands weakly to his side. There was so much blood. "I'm going to drag you. It's a smooth floor. Maybe it'll feel better than me carrying you." Blaine didn't protest and Kurt grabbed his feet and began to pull. After four more steps, he tripped and landed on his knees again. Darkness crowded the sides of his vision. 

He couldn't do it.

Blaine was going to die while Kurt watched.

The sound of something battering against the door caught his attention. Quinn raised her arm against whoever was coming for their heads. Kurt distantly wondered how much she had left in reserves, if he was this exhausted. If Quinn couldn't hold them off, then they'd all die. That was fair. If he let Blaine die in front of him because he'd been used as bait for Kurt, it didn't seem fair to let himself get out of it, either.

When the door ripped away, Puck and Mike stood behind it. Their eyes widened at the sight before them.

"Puck," Kurt whispered. Puck was there. Everything was going to be okay. "Puck!" he yelped and unsuccessfully tried to lunge to his feet. Mike zipped there in time to catch him before Kurt's skull could crack against the concrete. "Puck, you have to carry them out of the building, they got shot, they need help, ask Artie where a hospital is before you get outside the field, run there, you have to. You have to, please, Puck, please."

With one quick nod, Puck moved to grab Blaine and Sam. Lauren shared a quick kiss with him, but then pulled back, looking odd. "Make sure they're okay," she said quietly.

"Don't let him die," Kurt pleaded. "And don't get hurt, either." The words came out before he could help them.

"Same for... all of you," Puck said. He swallowed hard, and then left like a speeding car.

"Mike, can you help me fight?" Quinn asked, sounding even more tired than she had. "Just... I know this isn't what you're best at, but...."

Guards, woken from their sleep by the alarms, rounded another corner and Mike shot forward. Like a pinball striking pegs, they were all knocked down in short order. Unlike their group, he clearly had energy to spare. "Thank you," Quinn said when Mike returned to them. "We might actually make it."

Yeah, Kurt thought dully. They might.

* * *

"Got it," Puck said as Carole told him a hospital address. Head east. Head east. Head toward the lights.

He could feel Sam and Blaine's blood on his arms.

_Time to be a hero, Puckerman._

He ran, not like Mike could, but still as fast as a cheetah. _Cheetahs have no stamina,_ Puck heard in his own voice and almost started laughing. He had stamina. He could do this. He was going to have his big moment.

He covered more than a mile before he slowed. He wasn't worried about getting tired; he could run for an hour, probably. But he was running hard and fast and they were slippery with their own blood. He hiked them up again and sped, adjusting his path slightly when he felt like he was getting off-course.

_Time to be a hero._

* * *

Even before the light faded, the sound of bullets greeted Rachel's ears. She could hear shouts from people identifying themselves as members of S.H.I.E.L.D.

They were still in New York. They weren't dead. They might have won.

* * *

After another stretch of hard, pounding running, Puck grunted slightly and tried to shift his grip again. It sent pain radiating through Blaine, and though he tried to bite it back, a whimper slipped out. "Sorry," Puck said and laid him on the ground with surprising care. "I just need to adjust."

Water ran cold against Blaine. Long grass and the late hour had hidden the shallow ditch below him, and rainwater soaked his back. His entire body felt cold by that point, like he'd been swimming for too long, even though he knew it was one of the hottest nights of summer. Only the spot where his blood flowed free felt warm, and it was blazing. "You're getting tired," he said. "You need to...." Blaine closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was hard to open them. He was weary. "Find a car. Call for help."

"I'm not tired," Puck said and adjusted his grip on Sam. "You're just awkward, I didn't want to drop you." Blood smeared his arms. If Blaine was exhausted but awake while Sam was completely unconscious, he wondered how much the other boy had lost. He felt floaty, distant. It was easy to admit that both he and Sam might well be dead by the end of the night. It would just happen to characters in a comic book. Extras in a movie. Not to him. Not to anyone real. 

They'd be the tragic losses that set the heroes on the right path. Origin stories. Just footnotes in their story. Turning points in their tales. Sam was right.

It was a shame they were in New York, Blaine thought tiredly as he felt his body fail around him. Even on the island, the lights of the city meant that he could barely see the stars. If you died at night, outside, you should at least be able to see the stars.

"Okay, got him," Puck said and knelt down to recover Blaine. "Whoa, hold up," he said, and instantly pulled him out of the water as Blaine began to slump into it. 

Fresh pain tore through him and Blaine returned to earth. His eyes closed tight against tears that wanted to form.

"There's water there," Puck pointed out needlessly. "You were about to get it in your cut."

Blaine blinked at him, feeling slow and stupid, and still trying not to sob from the pain.

"It looks pretty gross," Puck said and carefully retrieved him from the ground. "You don't want it to get inside where you got hurt," he explained as he carefully got a good hold on Blaine, and then moved back into the road to re-orient himself toward their destination.

If that dirty gutter water had gotten inside his wound, Blaine thought through his haze, he would have developed an infection. No doubt about it. That was water filled with the runoff of lawn fertilizer and dog droppings, of tears in garbage bags where leftover bits of chicken had rotted into tiny pieces. They would have filled him with new blood and stitched his wound. He would have been in recovery. He would have spiked a fever anyway, and then he would have died.

He would have died quietly and no one would have ever even looked at Puck.

"You could have let me," he mumbled and didn't know if Puck heard him.

Puck did. "I would never do that," he said, and clearly knew exactly what had run through Blaine's mind. "And I'm going to be the guy that no one would think that of, either."

"Sorry," Blaine said. His brain felt as thick and stupid as his tongue.

"You'd better take care of him," Puck might have said, if Blaine wasn't imagining it. "Like I tried to."

There were lights, soon, and people leaning over him, and a stretcher. Sam was on one, too. He wasn't moving. The last thing Blaine saw before consciousness fled was Puck staring at him, his face unreadable.

* * *

The machine was, if not destroyed, not easily activated again. The Rift had been pulled out of Finn's mind, rather than his powers. _And,_ Rachel thought with exhaustion as she heard the agent group approach, _we have backup._

She didn't know what was happening with anyone not in that room. They'd have to find everyone else. But for now, at least for them, they were safe.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents flooded the area, guns at the ready. She knew it was a small, untrained group compared to what they might have normally sent, but they all looked like angels. "Status!" one shouted.

"We... it's over," Rachel panted. Santana and Brittany leaned against each other in exhaustion. Tina and Mercedes looked ready to do the same. If she and Finn didn't have the length of the room between them, she'd fall into his arms. "Finn let it drain—"

"One of the metahumans is preparing to activate energy transfer," said the captain, interrupting her. "Halt it at all costs."

But that didn't make any sense, Rachel thought, and was about to tell them that.

They had their orders, though. A target was a target, just like Sue would have killed Puck. A S.H.I.E.L.D. sharpshooter raised his gun and put a bullet directly between Finn's eyes.


	26. Stability

The building shook, deep and long.

Though S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had swarmed its top floors, brainwashed locals and Rifts still crowded the guts of the facility. They didn't yet know they'd lost. The four teenagers still looked like targets.

Kurt, Quinn, and Lauren would have been overwhelmed if Mike had chosen to leave with Puck. Their savior was a blur, faster than they'd known he could move. Whenever he impacted a group they broke apart in every direction. The few unlucky humans had the wind knocked out of them as they slammed against walls. Mike couldn't easily kill Rifts, but he kept them occupied and made them easier targets.

Quinn had seemed close to her limits before, but she'd somehow found new reserves. Her hand threw blast after blast, and when they rounded a corner she even managed to block off the hallway behind them. That sheet of ice wouldn't last forever, but it gave them breathing room. She tried to check on Lauren. The girl's answers were short and harsh, especially when Quinn told her what to do for her own good.

Kurt barely saw any of it. His hands tried to grip bare walls and slid, and he hit the ground more than once. He too had managed to find another sliver of energy, but it wasn't enough. His knees were either useless jelly or locked. He never knew which until he tried to take a step.

In the middle of a fresh attempt to move forward, he felt a bullet tear through Finn's brain, still interwoven with his. Screaming, Kurt dropped to the floor as heavily as Finn's corpse had. Lauren rushed forward, but they were all taken by surprise; she missed catching him. Arching so far with pain that a normal back might have snapped, Kurt wailed in agony as a brain linked with his own faded, synapse by synapse. 

Then came the psychic echoes. Terrified of fading into nothing, they swarmed their most likely host, who'd already granted them an open door. The instinctive, desperate remnants of Finn Hudson began to burrow into Kurt's brain like termites eating away a house's foundation. His identity began to shred under the assault, and then his life.

The others tried to help, but there was nothing they could do. Their enemies broke through Quinn's wall and came at them anew.

* * *

Finn's body took a second to fall.

Rachel howled and metal tore apart in red and violet melodies. She lunged toward Finn as he dropped to his knees, and then landed flat and dead against the floor. Santana saw the guards raise their guns for another shot as Rachel moved, not comprehending or caring that the machine was destroyed. "No!" Santana yelled. She caught Rachel in her arms and wrestled her down.

"Let me go," Rachel sobbed. "Let me _go!_ "

Mercedes snarled. She brought her hands up to meet the guns and a ripple of force tore away from her to impact the full lineup of agents. They slammed against the curved wall and were pinned like insects under glass.

Brittany and Tina stared at Finn's corpse, open-mouthed. They both looked paralyzed with shock. "Finn. He. Finn. And. They're. They're in front of the door," Tina said as she turned between the body and their sole exit. "We can't leave." As soon as Mercedes dropped those shields, they'd either be shot or arrested.

"Beth's crying," Brittany said. She swallowed hard and didn't seem to notice the tears streaming down her cheeks. "Someone needs to get Beth, she's so loud, she's... she's going to get covered in _blood_ , someone needs to pick her up."

They'd won, Santana thought in a daze as Rachel sobbed under her. They'd saved New York and the world. All it had cost them was Finn, possibly every other friend of theirs outside that room, and their future freedom. They were going to wind up in prison, after all. They were heroes and they were still going to jail that night, if Mercedes didn't just push a little harder and squish them all and earn bullets of their own.

Santana frowned. She looked back at the wall, then the machine. Rachel had long since stopped struggling. "Rachel can't do that," Santana whispered as she tried to comprehend what she saw. There was no way Rachel's voice could tear apart metal like plastic.

"What's going on in there?" Artie's voice asked on her shoulder.

"Rachel blew up the machine," Santana said. Somehow, that seemed more important than what had happened to Finn. Maybe she didn't want to think about how he was dead. "And Mercedes is holding back all of the soldiers." What was going on? Mercedes couldn't do that with her powers, either. Her bubbles didn't get that big, or stay that stable.

"Is everyone okay?" Carole asked.

Santana flinched. They were going to have to tell Carole. She'd walk in there and see her son's body. They'd have to tell Burt. And they'd have to tell Kurt, if he wasn't dead, too. That was a headshot and their brains were linked.

"The energy field is gone," Artie said. "Everything looks so...." He was quiet for a long second, and finally said, "Everything's stable." He began to explain what he saw in big, complicated words. Santana didn't understand all of them. But she got the heart of what he was saying, even if only every third word registered.

Her gaze rested on the shattered machine as Artie spewed science. That facility had been waiting for years. All that time, they'd been ready to harvest the unstable, inter-dimensional energy of the Tesseract to power the Eastern Seaboard. They'd kept that door open by force after it had been purchased with the deaths of their parents. It was ready to plug into all those different dimensions at a second's notice.

The energy flowing between worlds had to be unpredictable. Unstable. Now, the door was closed. It had folded in on itself and disappeared after void met void, and Rachel's little fireworks could suddenly rip apart solid steel.

That was what Artie had realized, and Santana had witnessed: they had their full powers. More importantly, they had full control of them. Santana stumbled to her feet, ignoring Rachel as she flung herself toward Finn, and turned off her communicator when Carole desperately asked again whether everyone was all right. "Brittany," Santana said as she grabbed the girl's shoulders. "You can fix this."

"What?" Brittany asked, nervous. "How?"

"Your powers can do anything." Santana tried to smile encouragingly. "Your powers can do _anything_ , remember?"

"You mean... I don't want to make Finn a zombie," Brittany said, starting to shake her head. 

"No, no. Turn things back... three minutes. Four minutes." If unstable chaos could open an interdimensional portal that took a few wrong turns over hundreds of miles, controlled chaos had to be able to regain four little minutes. It wouldn't save Sue's life, but Sue would understand. "All you have to do is turn things back four minutes, Brittany, and things will be okay."

"I can't," Brittany whispered. "You saw what happened with Sue's arm, and Kurt almost went through it. I would have... I'll just hurt everyone."

"No, you won't," Santana said. She tried to ignore how the agents struggled for their guns under Mercedes' shields, or how Rachel pulled Finn's bloody head onto her lap as she wailed. Brittany could do this; Santana knew that for a fact. But she would need help. "You can do this." She moved her hands down Brittany's arms, smiled, and embraced the girl. "You can do this. Just focus on me. You haven't practiced how to use your full powers, yet, but they're _there_."

"Santana...." Brittany said. That wasn't a no.

"Four minutes," Santana said soothingly. "Four minutes. Focus on me. I'm the whole world. Make time stop for us, and then just turn it back four minutes." Her lips met Brittany's, soft and secure, and their bodies pressed close. _Four minutes,_ Santana thought. _First, make the world stop._

Glowing pink filaments appeared around them, drifting like seeds on the wind. They circled tight, tighter, until a cocoon sealed around the girls. It began to glow like the sun. Rachel's sobbing, the agents' shouts: they all slowed, sputtered, and stopped. The room was perfectly still. There was only Santana and Brittany inside that bubble of pure probability, and only their heartbeats and breathing broke the silence.

Four minutes.

It was so quiet that the sound of Beth's crying nearly made Santana claw at her ears. The kid was loud. A second later, she realized what laid before her: Finn was wobbling to his feet next to the girl. 

Brittany had done it.

Without hesitation, Santana raced across the metal plating and onto concrete. Her steps echoed as she pounded toward Finn. He just had the chance to look at her in surprise before she hit at full force, sending him stumbling backward and sliding across the slick floor. She landed on Finn and came for the ride. When they stopped, they were well away from the machine. No one would think he was doing anything with it. Hopefully.

"Ow," said Finn, probably wondering why he'd just had an alien ripped out of his head, come close to being dragged into a machine that would end his life and then the world, and then been taken down by friendly fire.

"Stay down and don't move, I'm saving your life," Santana said shortly.

"Was I dead?" Finn asked. "I remember being dead."

"Yes. Shut up." That close to the epicenter of Brittany's chaos-made changes, everyone remembered what had happened. Rachel stared at Finn in mingled horror and amazement, but she had the sense not to run toward him as tears of joy streaked her cheeks.

When the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents arrived a second time, there was only a crying infant in front of the broken machine. They surveyed the room quickly, and then lowered their weapons. Santana started breathing again. "Everyone all right?" their captain asked when he'd apparently determined that there were no world-ending threats that demanded immediate action.

"You're not going to shoot us, right?" Tina asked, taking a step back.

The agents looked at each other warily. "No."

Mercedes stared at Finn like she didn't know what to make of him, but snapped abruptly out of her daze. "Our other friends are downstairs. You guys need to run down and shoot any creepy Rift thingies before they can hurt them."

"They... they tripped security, they'll need backup," Rachel shakily agreed, before it became too much for her to resist and she ran toward Finn. Santana rolled off and let them have their reunion. Her head swam as she passed Beth, who was being scooped up by an agent and wrapped in his shucked jacket. Tina and Mercedes grinned at her, and then left with permission to help the agents recover their friends.

"You were amazing," Santana told Brittany as they reunited.

"I did it," Brittany said, overwhelmed. "We _all_ did it."

"Is everyone okay?" asked a voice on Santana's shoulder. With a wry smile, Santana looked at her communicator, and then at the still-dazed Finn as Rachel fretted over him. 

"Yeah, we're good," Santana said, and then decided to turn it off before anyone said anything too revealing. "Everyone's fine. Um, the baby's crying and it's really annoying, I'm going to save your ears, bye!" Carole protested, but Santana reached up to her shoulder and clicked it off.

Finn looked at everyone there. _Can we not tell my mom that I died? Please?_ He was pale. After that night, his eyes were dark and haunted.

"Finn!" Rachel said. "This had to be traumatic for you, you need help!"

He shuddered hard enough for Santana to see from across the room, even with the distraction of flashing monitors and sparking wires. "I know. But just let me do it later."

"All right," Rachel said, visibly relenting. "Of course we'll be there for you, until you decide to tell them."

A commotion at the door made them all turn. Mike, looking tired, set Kurt on the ground. Kurt lurched forward even more unsteadily than Rachel had, and barely made it across the room without falling on his face. He grabbed Finn, clumsily shoving aside Rachel in the process, and demanded, "Did you die?"

"Yeah." Finn shivered. Rachel tried to worm her way back into the pile they made, but Kurt ignored her completely.

"You are not allowed to die!" Kurt said, and looked ready to punch him. "You died inside my head! Stay alive! No one else can die tonight! You can't be possessed, and you can't die! We... we need to go to the hospital. Puck took them there, we have to see if they're okay. We have to go to the hospital and you can't die. You can't... you...." He took another breath, couldn't quite form his next words, and only managed a few stray syllables. Kurt's eyes rolled back into his head and he passed out on top of Finn.

"Is he okay?" Santana asked as Rachel checked Kurt frantically over for any injuries.

Finn stared at the boy slack on top of him. "Yeah, he's just worn out. What hospital did Puck go to? Who'd he take? Quinn's naked."

"Huh?" Rachel and Santana both asked, and then looked at the door.

Indeed, Quinn was stark naked in her ice form. The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents around her cleared their throats. "Can I borrow someone's coat?" she asked tiredly. Her eyes lit up when she saw the soldier carrying Beth, and she snatched the first offered jacket. She tied it around herself like a tube dress, ending just past her pelvis, and Quinn turned back to warm flesh and blood as she grabbed for her child. "Oh, you need some food," she said soothingly. "And to get washed up somewhere."

"I don't think you should be looking for a bathroom, miss," said one of the agents. "The facility isn't secure, yet."

Quinn stared at him. "So why are you all standing around in here?"

The remaining agents exchanged glances, and then began to file out into the hallway almost meekly.

"Mike!" Tina said when she passed by the door again and saw that he was inside. They kissed, grateful to be reunited. When they broke apart, she asked, "Want to help me and Mercedes go clean things up?"

"Sure," Mike said, even though he was only moving at half speed. 

Santana slung her arm around Brittany's waist. The girl grinned brilliantly at her, and then pulled her even closer. "We were pretty great tonight," said Brittany.

"We were," Santana said in amazement as they looked around the room with the machine that would have destroyed New York City and could have ended the world. They were still there, and everyone was still alive. No, she corrected. A shadow fell over her expression. Not everyone. 

"I think she'd be proud of us," Quinn said softly as she saw the grief build behind Santana's eyes. "All of us."

"The best thing we can do for Sue is win," Santana agreed. It was impossible to believe that Sue Sylvester had _died._ She was a force of nature. Those didn't die; Anderson Cooper warned about them on the Weather Channel. But Sue was gone. More than anything else, that really seemed to mark the end of Santana's old life in Ohio.

"Yeah," Quinn said, and managed a sad smile. "We'll do just what she said, and be fantastic."

Santana looked across the room, and felt the corners of her mouth twitch wryly up despite herself. Kurt's head lolled over Finn's arm as he was carried. His mouth hung wide open. Held like that, he snored. "Yeah, we all look really fantastic right now."

Quinn managed a weak giggle. "To be fair, you should see him weaving through lasers."

"Why were you naked?" Brittany asked, having apparently devoted quite a lot of mental energy hunting for any plausible answer.

"Kurt needed to be able to grab and slide me," Quinn said. She saw Santana's eyebrow arch and said, "We did whatever we had to do to get the job done. Like Sue would have wanted."

"Yeah," Santana said, and leaned against Brittany. "Oh, um, we're not telling Carole what happened to Finn." Quinn looked confused as Santana pictured his family finding out, having decided that it would happen on Thanksgiving or Christmas, just for the sake of irony. So long as she wasn't around for it. "Hey, uh... who did Puck take to the hospital?" Santana asked. She'd started to run the numbers. They'd gone downstairs to retrieve the three normal humans, and only people with powers had come back upstairs. Those normal humans weren't around. Puck had gone to the hospital.

"Sam and Blaine," Quinn said, soft between Beth's occasional cries. The baby was clearly still hungry, but kind human contact had placated her. "An agent took Lauren to safety, but the guys...."

"Are they okay?" Brittany asked. Worry began to creep into her voice; they could all feel their happy ending falling away.

"I don't know," Quinn said sadly. "They got... they got shot. There was a lot of blood."

"They're going to be fine," Santana declared. She couldn't take more drama. Everything would work out. "Finn got shot and he's fine. That's just how things are working tonight." So long as she ignored Sue, her logic held. Santana pictured blood and a broken windshield, and quickly stomped on her traitorous mind.

"So, um, to clarify: Kurt said that Finn died?" Quinn asked. She nodded at where Finn was carrying Kurt with some telekinetic assistance; Finn certainly looked healthy at a quick glance.

"I turned back time," Brittany said, and shrugged.

"Oh," Quinn said blankly. "I guess I didn't notice. I suppose that explains why Kurt screamed all of a sudden, and kept panicking until Mike helped him upstairs." Beth started crying again and Quinn adjusted her grip. "We should go, too. She needs to be looked at."

"And changed," Santana said.

"Very much," Quinn said.

So they'd won. Right? Everything had to be fine. Santana saw Mercedes run by the door, closed her eyes, and said a quick and rare prayer. She'd gotten out of telling Carole that her son was dead. Mercedes didn't need to hear that her boyfriend had bled out from a bullet she could have stopped if she'd been downstairs with her shields. 

_Come on, world,_ Santana quietly pleaded. _Work with us. Just for the rest of the night._ They'd saved the world. It owed them that much.

* * *

Everyone else might be dying, and Puck was stuck staring at a year-old copy of Men's Health. The others in the waiting room steered clear of him, covered in blood and dressed in a functional and used superhero's costume. Puck felt on edge, like he could run across the island and back before they even knew he'd left. But he couldn't go back to the facility alone. It had been a risk leaving, and if he got grabbed during his return it'd ruin everything. It'd blow up the entire world.

He just wanted to hear what was going on, dammit.

"Sir?" a nurse said, and Puck lurched to his feet. 

"Are they okay?"

"Who are you with?" He shook his head, confused, and she expanded on her question. "Are you with any of the teams in town? Or are you an independent operator?"

"Independent. I mean, I'm with a team, but we're not from here. We _are_ from here, just... are they okay?" Puck asked. Why wouldn't anyone tell him what was happening?

"I just didn't recognize you, is all," she said with an easy smile. "It's always fun to meet someone new, especially when they do a big, dramatic save like you managed."

"Yes, I'm new," Puck said with irritation. "Champion. Are they okay?"

"One boy is in recovery, and the other is still in surgery. They both lost a lot of blood and some complications arose with one. The doctors are optimistic, but...." Her smile turned apologetic. It wasn't as serious as it would be for a family member; it was directed at a hero who was used to saving people every single day, and didn't have personal connections with any of them. "Well, he's not out of the woods yet, but everyone's fingers are crossed."

Blaine. Puck knew, he absolutely _knew,_ as surely as he knew he'd lived on the Upper West Side and that he and Kurt had a favorite restaurant on 94th. He'd done the right thing, even though Blaine himself thought Puck would just toss him aside. Puck had been better than that. He'd been the stand-up guy, the selfless hero. 

Even though he loved Lauren, it still killed him to remember the way he'd been able to light up Kurt's face when no one else could. He was happy with her, he really was, but he could never be happy about how things had ended with Kurt. He remembered every single second of what he'd lost. The world had ruined something perfect, hammering at it with dead parents and false memories, and then he'd taken over the job of stomping on their love's corpse. His heart ached as he pictured Kurt turning away from him and smiling at Blaine, instead, who Kurt had chosen because Blaine was better than Puck in every way that mattered to him. 

Except now Blaine was going to die.

Kurt was going to be alone.

And even if Puck had tried his best, Kurt would probably blame him for it.

When Puck snapped back to attention, the nurse had left. He looked helplessly around the waiting room, only barely aware of the others around him, and sought answers from the front desk. "Hey, the two guys I brought in...."

"Our John Does," she said, nodding. 

"Uh. No, their names are Sam Evans and Blaine Anderson. Sam's blond, Blaine's got the dark hair. I just want to know how they're doing."

"I'll check," she said. It was approaching five A.M. and the room was very quiet. She seemed willing to help him out during that slow hour, even in a somewhat grimy ER that was probably a madhouse during the day. _Small favors,_ Puck thought as he waited. "Sam's still in surgery," she said upon her return and Puck stared at her blankly until she repeated herself.

"Sam," Puck said. That couldn't be right. Sam was in surgery? Sam had the complications? But he'd known that Blaine was the one who was really hurt, despite holding onto consciousness longer. He'd just _known._

"You said he's the blond boy, right?" When Puck nodded, she patted his hand sympathetically. "They were both very lucky to have you around; if it had been any longer, Sam definitely wouldn't have pulled through. But they're hopeful about him, since they were able to get him into the OR quickly. And the other's asleep, in recovery. He's stable."

"Oh," Puck said. "Good." He swallowed. So Blaine would be fine. Kurt would sit by his bedside and coax him through, and they'd walk off into their big life together. Just like they'd planned. There would be no heartbreak, there would be no mourning. Blaine would make him happy. After risking his life to save him, Kurt would never let him go.

Good. Yeah. That was great news. Puck believed that, he _did_ , but he was just numb. "Sam's my friend," Puck said. "Can I wait here until I hear that he's okay?"

"Of course."

Puck took a seat again. He ignored the magazines before him, and instead watched the clock's second hand click through countless rotations.

* * *

All of them were taken to that hospital. S.H.I.E.L.D. blocked off an entire floor for them. They were under no time pressure to leave, nor had any worries about a bill. Everyone was assigned to a room before Puck was ever pointed away from the ER. He hadn't known it was over. He'd had to be told they'd won. It didn't feel like it.

Carole sat between her boys' beds and gently stroked their shoulders. They both slept like they'd been drugged. She kept nodding off as well, and nearly pitched to the floor before she gave up and asked for her own bed. She never would have left them if either were injured, but they were nothing worse than tired. She couldn't believe her luck. When Burt arrived, she thought as she finally fell asleep, he was going to hear all about how fortunate they were.

Mercedes tried to follow a stretcher down the hallway, but was steered firmly away. She could only watch from a distance as Sam was wheeled out of surgery.

Sue's body was taken to the morgue.

Quinn's fingertips lightly brushed the window of the pediatric ward. S.H.I.E.L.D. had wanted Beth in isolation, as they weren't totally sure what had been done to her, and so she could only watch as the doctor and nurses checked on the girl. She was cleaned, fed, and comforted. Soothed like that, she was quiet once more. _She's a beautiful baby,_ Quinn thought fondly. _Anyone would love her._

"How's she doing?" 

Turning to face Puck as he walked up, Quinn smiled at him, and then looked back through the window. "She seems all right. Nothing too bad happened, and she's coming out of it well."

"Good," Puck said. "I kinda hate that neither of us were there when they rescued her, though. You know?"

"Yes, I do. But other people would have died if we hadn't been somewhere else, helping." Quinn didn't look at him as she finished, "That's why they'll have to find her a new home, you know. With people who can look after her as much as she needs."

"Yeah, I know," Puck said.

She hadn't truly expected that he'd argue with her over that, but it was still good to hear. "I wonder what powers she'll have."

"Great ones," Puck said instantly.

Quinn laughed once, and then sobered. "How's Lauren?"

"She's okay. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s grilling her about everything that happened, since she's the only one of the three who didn't get hurt. Sounds like they're going to take a while with it." Puck folded his arms and seemed to shrink in on himself, losing twenty pounds and five years. "But she's okay. Everyone's going to be okay."

"You should get some sleep," Quinn said. "It wasn't that long ago that Shelby had you mindcontrolled. Remember?" At his pointed look, she added, "Okay, I'll go, too." Puck was right; she'd pushed herself hard, as well. Quinn allowed herself a few seconds more in front of the window, and then left with Puck in search of the room numbers they'd been given. "I'm in a daze. I haven't really processed anything."

"Yeah, tell me about it."

"Oh. We have our full powers, now." Quinn shrugged when Puck looked at her, confused. "The doorway was shut down and that stabilized us. Artie tried to explain it, but I didn't totally understand. Anyway, we're stronger now, and we're in control, and no one can try to drain us any more. It's over."

"Huh," Puck said. It was a massive assertion: they'd been marked as targets for the rest of their lives, but now they were completely safe and stronger than ever. He seemed as incapable of wholly understanding that change as Quinn had. Maybe they would comprehend it after a night's rest, or after a month of living again in freedom. "Well, that's good."

"Yeah," Quinn said. "It sounds like we're going to be here for a while, and they'll probably start grilling us, too."

"Hey, uh, this sounds dumb, but...."

"The rooms have two beds," Quinn said, guessing. From Puck's reaction, her guess was right: he didn't want to be alone. "Sure."

"Thanks," Puck said and followed her.

* * *

"S.H.I.E.L.D. will want to talk to you about what happened. They're flying out your families, and they'll put you up in hotels if it goes on much longer. They just want to keep you in the area. I'm sure you want to see the people in recovery, too, when they're ready for visitors." They'd all heard a similar speech when they'd woken up. Most had slept until nine or ten, and even then they were still tired.

"The city's still here," Tina said proudly as she and Mike looked at a framed print of New York that hung on her room's wall.

"Plus, you know: the whole world's still here," he added, with a gesture toward everything around them.

"And that." Tina hopped onto the edge of her bed and swung her feet. "Is it weird to say that I'm okay with retiring the whole 'Dread' thing, now?"

Mike sat opposite her, resting on air. "Why?"

"I really do like helping people," Tina said. "But you know what my favorite thing last night was? It wasn't saving all those millions of people that I never saw in person. It was taking care of Sue's pain when Santana burned her arm." She looked down. "At least she didn't have to go through more of that before she... you know."

Before she died. Right. Mike nodded. "I was happy to help everyone, too. But some of the others really seemed to... click with everything we were doing. I just wanted to make it through. I like what I can do, but I don't know if I'm ready to wear a costume full-time." Would he have a choice, though? If there was still a team, they'd want him on it. He'd be expected to contribute, just like he'd been expected to hold a career that required a lot of letters after his name. He was tired of living up to what he was supposed to do.

A set of footsteps at the door made Tina hop to her feet, but Mike forgot to stop floating. His parents were there, apparently the first to arrive. They looked both relieved to see him and surprised at what he was doing. He quietly put his feet back on the floor. "Michael," his father said solemnly. "We heard that you were involved in quite a big event last night."

"Yes, sir." Mike swallowed.

"We sorta saved the world," Tina said. They turned to her, eyebrows raised. "Should I go?" she asked and pointed to the door.

"No," Mike said, and grabbed for her hand. "Stay." He wanted someone to have his back for this next bit. "I don't want to be a full-time superhero," he said. Both of his parents looked pleased, but he wasn't done. "But I don't want to be a doctor or lawyer or whatever, either. After I graduate, I want to move back to New York and I want to help people."

His father's brow furrowed. "Well," he said gravely, "there's nothing wrong with NYU or Columbia. We can look over their majors and—"

"No," Tina said. He looked at her, equally startled and offended, and she sighed. "I'm really sorry to interrupt, but he doesn't want to do any of that. We've talked about it."

"Doctors and lawyers do 'help people,'" pointed out his mother, though with a kinder tone. "Mike, remember how we talked about whether to put your powers down on a college application?"

"But that's not what I really want." Mike swallowed hard. "Look, both of us are figuring out what we want to do in life. We've had people controlling us, right down to our memories. We want to do what...." Mike struggled for what to say next. "We want to do what we _want_ to do." Maybe he would join a dance troupe in New York, and amaze everyone with his impossible moves before moonlighting as the world's most helpful superpowered neighbor. Or maybe he would figure out something with his powers that helped people, and spend his nights dancing in one of the most expressive cities in the world. Either way, that was what he wanted.

"We'll talk about this later," his father said archly. "I'm glad to see you're all right. I need to go talk to the agents about some things, now." Well, then. So much for that. 

His mother stayed around, at least. Julia had a sad smile on her face as she studied the two of them. "We _are_ glad that you're okay. More than we can say. He's just... he's set in his ways. But you're right. You've had your life chosen for you, and if this will make you happy, well... you should do it." She looked around the room after she said that, like she'd get caught at it, and then nodded. "Both of you should do what'll make you happy."

"That's the plan," Tina said, relieved.

"Well, okay. I'm going to go chase him down, then, and smile and nod while he asks a lot of impatient questions," she said wryly, and departed after a hug and kiss for her son. 

Mike let out a sigh of relief. "At least one of them is on my side."

"We still don't know what we're doing," Tina admitted, "but we'll be able to screw up as much as we want."

"Um, hey," said a new voice. They both looked over to see Mercedes poking her head through the door, sheepish. "I kinda eavesdropped. So, uh... you guys want to talk about ideas for helping people without signing up for a mask 24/7?" When they grinned at Mercedes, she beamed back, and closed the door behind her.

* * *

The rest of the parents arrived quickly. Any available seat to anywhere in New York City was reserved for them.

Burt embraced Kurt as tightly as he ever had, and pulled in Finn and Carole as soon as Kurt had to push him away for air. He'd been left alone in Lima to wait and wonder. They'd never have to go through that separation again. Finn latched onto Kurt's mind for stability as he lied about everything that had happened, and Kurt let him.

Even the Lopezes rushed there as fast as they could. There might not be love driving them to see Santana, but there was still pride and concern. Santana took what they had to offer, even as she remembered her real parents as sharply as if she'd never lost them. Just as the previous night had fixed their powers, it had restored every second of their old memories. Perhaps the acceptance of what they felt for her should have hurt, but Santana knew she had love in her life. It might not come from these parents, but she had love that could change the whole freaking world.

When Quinn heard that Judy had arrived, she was actually excited to see her. _It's funny how things work out,_ she thought with a grin as she hurried around a corner, headed for the elevators to their private floor. But when someone called her name, it wasn't Judy. Quinn stopped in shock. She could see Judy at the far end of the hallway, looking just as stunned as Quinn.

Between them stood Russell Fabray in full uniform. The military beret on his head was spotless, without even a fleck of lint, and medals lined his chest. "I heard what happened, Quinnie," he said with a smile and absolutely no shame. "Sounds like you really did your old man proud. They weren't sure what to do with you, but then it came out that you were working with some real live agents. You got drafted, huh?"

"What are you doing here?" Quinn asked in shock.

"I realized I never should have left," he said gently. "I was wrong. I want to reconnect with my daughter."

"She's my daughter, Russell," Judy said coldly as she approached them both. "You left both of us."

"And you're a personal assistant for an insurance CEO, while I'm a decorated soldier," Russell said with a tight, dangerous smile. Quinn felt a chill run through her body. It wasn't simply nerves; her fingers were ready to ice over and take down the man if he did something wrong. "I know what Quinn needs to be doing with her life, Judy. Not you."

"I need to boost your career chances?" Quinn guessed. Russell turned back to her, startled. "So, they've really been talking about us? Considering that you took off because I wasn't getting you a promotion, I'm betting that they're really impressed with what we managed to do. So, now you want in on the glory again. Right?"

Russell looked annoyed, and didn't reply.

"Am I right?" Quinn repeated.

"I have been protecting this nation and its allies while your mom's been figuring out which 'self-medication' method would be the most fun," Russell said sharply, and glared at Judy. She didn't flinch, but she looked down.

It was incredibly difficult to keep her fists at her side instead of aiming an ice spike at her former father's nose. "You have no idea what our lives are like," Quinn said. She knew Judy had been to the doctor a few times, and occasionally she brought home a prescription bottle. There was nothing wrong with Judy getting any help she needed, and now Quinn had more sympathy for the challenges she faced. Quinn'd had more than enough of Russell blaming the two of them for not being perfectly Stepford, and for acting like any bumps in their lives were constructed specifically to make his life more difficult. "Russell?" she said sweetly, when she knew she'd gotten herself under control.

Russell frowned at her use of his first name.

Quinn beamed at him. "This big, successful, popular hero who's apparently getting all the buzz around S.H.I.E.L.D. has something to tell you: go fuck yourself."

Outraged, he began to move toward her. Quinn held up one icy hand and he backed off, and instead rounded on Judy. "This is how you're letting her behave? You're still not calling her on acting like some degenerate, even after what she did?"

Judy's eyebrows rose. "She's probably just following my lead. I think you can go fuck yourself, too."

"Don't," Quinn said when Russell looked ready to move on his ex-wife. "Unless you want to know what an ice cube feels like, firsthand."

"Well," Russell said after his jaw worked tightly. "I'm an active agent and you just threatened me. I hope you're prepared for the consequences."

"You're an agent and you just raised a fist against an unarmed civilian," said a new voice that they all turned to meet. Kurt stood there with folded arms and one arched eyebrow. "And I'm an agent's son, best friends with the daughter of two agents, and uninvolved with any 'family dispute' angle you might try to pull here. In other words: I'm a bad witness to have speaking against you."

Russell drew himself up to his full height, adjusted his beret, and stalked off without another word. Quinn suspected more than a bit that he'd only given up after being confronted by another man. The three watched him go, and snorted. "He's always at the bottom of the pile for evals," Judy said, rolling her eyes. "He's probably just skated by on being fired all this time, and thought you'd get him a few more years' slack with HR. I'll bet he was already in the area, but I'm amazed he actually bothered to take a ferry ride to come see us."

Quinn smiled at her. "My thoughts exactly." After a beat, she added, "Mom."

Judy hesitated, and then smiled back.

"Sorry," Kurt said once they'd had their exchange. "I didn't want to interrupt. It's just not visiting hours, yet, and I wanted to thank you for coming with me. I couldn't have done it on my own."

Quinn turned her smile to him. "Of course. I'm glad I came. Is everything okay?"

"It sounds like it. He's in recovery, and after his family sees him, I get to." Kurt exhaled, shaky, and added, "You saved Blaine's life. Thank you."

"We did." She reached up and lightly tapped his shoulder. "We kinda kick ass at this, don't we?"

"Quinn," Judy said, lightly chiding. Apparently, they were done with the poor language when it was used for anything but Russell.

Kurt hid his amusement admirably. "We kinda do."

"Oh," Quinn said, and dug through the papers she was carrying. An agent had dropped the stack in her room, much to her surprise. "Um, here. These are the files that Sue had. The ones about us." She planned to pass them out to everyone, and Kurt was her first encounter that day; Puck had vanished in search of information on Lauren. Quinn hadn't touched any file but her own. It wasn't her place to do so.

It hadn't been easy reading her assessment, but it had been essentially what she'd expected. Their psychic had decided that she was cold, brittle, and harsh in her worst moments. She'd been given a role to play—queen of the school—with the expectation that she would wear it well. In a way, it was almost like some sort of twisted wish fulfillment: everyone had forgotten about her before they moved to Ohio, and then she was the most popular girl around. But that psychic had known what would really happen when she was put in that role. The general population of McKinley had kept her just as distant as she'd been on Staten Island. No one really connected to the girl on a pedestal, not even the boyfriend she'd been distracting from Rachel.

Every person would get the chance to read the assessment of their strengths, weaknesses, and an explanation of why they'd wound up in the social position they had. She suspected it would be much harder for some people than others. From the way Kurt stared at his file, he must think the same. Eventually he said, "Well, I'll leave you alone. Again, thank you." He left the two of them, and Judy watched him go.

"He's gay, right?"

"Very, very yes." For all Quinn knew, Judy was ready to do some matchmaking if not headed off at the pass.

"Too bad, he seems nice. You know a lot of gay people now, Quinn. That's so interesting."

Quinn smiled helplessly. Judy meant well, at least.

Thankfully, another familiar figure approached; unfortunately, it was the worst possible person for discouraging her mother. "Hello!" Judy chirped excitedly to Artie. "It's so good to see you, Arthur. You two should go talk, if you want."

"Mom," Quinn said, "didn't you say that you were fine if I didn't want to get married until I was thirty? Or at all?"

"And I am fine," Judy said cheerfully. "I'm just being friendly." She then excused herself in search of coffee.

"Was your mom just trying to pimp you out?" Artie asked when they'd waited for Judy to disappear around a corner. He didn't sound entirely displeased with the idea, and Quinn looked at him flatly.

"You're her second choice. She just tried to hook me up with Kurt."

That did a fine job of letting the wind out of his sails. "Oh," Artie said. "Um. I asked an agent about those files you took out of Sue's bag, since I thought they'd still be in the plane. It sounds like they brought them to you?" Nodding, she started looking for Artie's folder. They must have reviewed the footage on the plane, Quinn decided, and seen Sue telling her about the files. It was strange to think of watching those last minutes of Sue's life, or of reading the web pages that Jacob had put up. Finding the right folder, she handed it over. Artie stared at it with distrust. "I guess I want to read this."

"It's up to you," Quinn said, and shrugged. She wouldn't blame anyone for remaining ignorant of what some telepath had decided they were worth, and who they were at their core.

With a long sigh, he opened it and began reading. "An agent talked to me this morning," Artie said as he scanned the pages. "Someone new, not one of the guys who was there with us last night. He said that S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted to make sure that I heard this before I went home." A small smile grew, and Artie finished, "Apparently, I had a lot of schematics and stuff in my house when they brainwashed us. Really cool stuff. They want to see if I can figure out more."

"That's great, Artie," Quinn said. Though her words were sincere, she was also confused as to why Artie didn't seem bothered by the words on the page. It had certainly been hard for her to read hers.

"Well, I was in the same place I was now," Artie paraphrased, gesturing at the paper, "and had about as many friends. I had to go through being an easy target again when I moved to Ohio, but...." He shrugged. "That's all right now, so I guess everything's fine." Any bad mood had faded quickly in light of his praise from that agent, and apparently, he hadn't taken any personal assessment to heart. It was good to know that some people could glide past any criticism, still high on flying a plane and getting personal praise from S.H.I.E.L.D. "Oh, uh. It sounds like that agent talked to her not too long ago. Sue, I mean."

Quinn sobered. "And?"

"He really respected her." Artie squeezed her hand. "It sounds like she either had them all awed or terrified." When Quinn giggled, tinged with sadness, he gave her a smile to equal it. "Anyway, thanks for the file. I'd better figure out what I'm going to make to really impress S.H.I.E.L.D by the time I graduate. Hey, uh... do you know what you're doing to do then?"

"Yeah," Quinn said after a long and thoughtful pause, where Sue's last words echoed in her ears. "I'm not going to disappoint her."

And she wasn't. She'd live up to that promise. After all, she'd kinda kicked ass.


	27. SUBJECT XH1331-87-##

Visiting hours had just started. Kurt had been able to talk to his friends and family all he liked that morning, but Blaine had been off-limits. At first that hadn't bothered him: Blaine was alive, on the mend, and needed his recovery sleep. Now Blaine was awake, though. His parents had arrived just in time to see him, and so long as they were in the room, Kurt wouldn't be. The Andersons must hate him after all the stress he'd brought into their lives. He needed a way to delay himself so he wouldn't be tempted to come near until Blaine was left alone. 

He supposed he could talk to Finn again, even though the boy was distant and distracted. That was understandable; neither of them were fully over Finn's death, and wouldn't be for a long time. Kurt had dark, painful memories of his own that he tried to keep out of Finn's head, but still left him wondering just what that bullet had done to his own linked mind before Brittany reset the universe. Both had shoved all of those questions deep into their subconscious, where they could be dealt with after they'd made it through the first few days of knowing what it felt like to die.

Rachel was fretting over Finn, Mercedes over Sam. His parents were dealing with the agency. There were no obvious answers for what he should do next, save one. After finding a seat in a quiet hallway, Kurt pulled out his file and started reading. He wanted to get it over with. 

The entire first page was filled with technical jargon that he didn't understand, a series of codes that seemed to be a half-dozen different ways to label him, and technical assessments of his various powers. He flipped to the next page and continued.

> _REPORTING AGENT: NONE  
>  REPORTING CONSULTANT: FROST E. G. / SALEM CENTER / NEW YORK / UNITED STATES OF AMERICA_
> 
> _CONSULTANT STATEMENT: I register my dismay at what I am being asked to do across this entire project. I am an educator, and I care about both the intellectual and emotional growth of the youth. What is being requested here is almost certain to have lasting psychological effects on these subjects. I recognize the severity of the situation leading to this request. I am still filing a formal protest that such a project is being undertaken, and am only participating because I know I would do a superior job on their behalf than any other telepath to whom the government has access._
> 
> _PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS: SUBJECT XH1331-87-07  
>  APPELLATION: HUTTON KURT_
> 
> _INITIAL CONSULTANT ANALYSIS OF SUBJECT PSYCHE/INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS: Kurt Hutton is one of the most emotionally connected to the children in this group. His and Rachel Berry's friendship, and of course his and Finn Hutton's birth connection, are the most well established relationships. As well, his romantic connection with Noah Puckerman is strong, if with less history behind it. RECOMMENDATION: Socially isolate him at his new location. He is likely to be a source of potential trouble above and beyond most others. Leave him friendless, with no ties outside of family. If adoptive parents agree to memory implantation, I suggest surreptitiously including a dislike of Noah Puckerman as an additional guarantee. Noah Puckerman may feel compelled to once again assist him in a time of need, if he sees him distressed. This should be discouraged._
> 
> _As for his personality, Kurt Hutton can be brave, caring, and determined. He also has the capacity to be selfish, arrogant, and coldly superior. His negative qualities are more easily observed. Strangers are likely to find him abrasive and unlikable on first meeting. For most, this dislike will not be challenged by his subsequent actions. RECOMMENDATION: There is no need to implant memories in the general populace in order to ensure Kurt Hutton remaining isolated. He is likely to be a target of existing social groups in the chosen city. He will not make friends. This has the chance of causing severe psychological distress._

Kurt sat for a very long time in the hallway and didn't say anything. There were more pages, but that was enough. No one he knew approached him. He was glad for that small favor. Words wouldn't have easily come.

_He will not make friends._

_This dislike will not be challenged by his subsequent actions._

They hadn't done a thing to that town. Only then did Kurt realize how much he'd been hoping for that excuse. They'd just dropped him in there and watched everyone hate him. Kurt stared at the file, and then slipped it back into its folder and wished he'd never read it. 

He _had_ made friends, though. _Screw you, E. G. Frost,_ he thought harshly. He'd made them in his old school, and he'd made them in New Directions. All right, fine, some of those friendships were just discovering old relationships anew, but he'd met Blaine. He'd met Sam and Lauren. They liked him for being himself, and they'd never been forced together by their parents' jobs.

He was better than what that file said. He was. Very deliberately, Kurt tore the folder in half, ripped it again, and kept at it until it was confetti. He threw most of it in the nearest trash can and stray bits of his life fell to the ground, like ticker tape in Times Square. So he hadn't fit into Lima, Ohio; fine. He had people who did care about him, and they'd saved the world. He didn't need Lima. Knowing where one fit into life was important. Clearly he belonged in New York, and when he moved there it would be like he'd never left.

Maybe someone would offer them tutors again, or maybe they'd all transfer to some new school. Either way, he was done with McKinley. Kurt knew where he would soon be headed: back to Manhattan. The city's soul welcomed him in, rather than pushing him down. And after all, Kurt thought as he walked with determination down the hallway, he had so many plans for what he'd be doing there.

* * *

Sam blinked awake. He hurt, and it took a while for the ceiling to come into focus. "Hey," he said, smiling weakly at the face hanging over his. He felt like some helpless infant in a cradle.

"Hey," Mercedes said quietly. Her fingertips traced his cheek. "How do you feel?"

"Like I got shot."

"Oh." She swallowed. "Well."

"Yeah." He tried to push himself up to see the room better, and instantly gave up on the idea when pain ripped through him. He'd barely moved. He was going to lose his entire summer to a hospital bed, Sam thought with dismay. "Are my folks around?"

"Your whole family's here," Mercedes said. "They flew everyone out. We've been trading off waiting for you to wake up. Your sister just really wanted lunch, so... they'll be back soon."

"What happened?" Sam asked as he surveyed the mass of tubes and dials around him. He looked like a bomb ready to go off.

"It hit your liver," Mercedes said after a long pause. "It's apparently like this big gross blood sponge, and it just kept bleeding and bleeding and...." She looked as sick as Sam felt when she stopped talking. After a deep breath, she continued. "But it didn't hit a vein or anything. And Puck got you here in time, so everything's going to be okay. They said it'll heal up. It's... it's sort of lucky that it was your liver. It heals. Other stuff doesn't." Sam didn't say anything, made mute by his brush with mortality, and Mercedes tearfully finished, "I'm so sorry you got hurt because of me."

"It's not your fault," Sam said. As soon as he said it, though, he looked down, unable to meet her eyes. "I just... I don't know if I can do this."

He loved the idea of something bigger being out there. But it was a lot easier to face impossible odds when they were playing a guild run in a game, and one of their healers could revive anyone who fell. When Obi-Wan could return as a ghost. When Sam Evans, an actual real live person, was something more than bait in a cell.

"Me neither," Mercedes said quietly, and Sam looked back up. "I'm awesome as part of a big team." Mercedes shook her head. "But I _don't_ want to be part of a big team, having cameras on us for blowing stuff up. Being such a huge freaking target gets so much attention and it's not the attention I want. I want to help without hurting people in the process."

"Nothing wrong with support powers," Sam said with a lopsided smile. "You can't do a raid without support classes."

"Dork." She hesitated. "You almost got killed because of me. That's not okay. The thing with Finn... that shouldn't go down again."

Sam worked through her words. "What happened to Finn?" Finn had telepathy and telekinesis; he was like friggin' Jean Grey. She was awesome. 

Mercedes bit her lip, then said, "He died. Brittany brought him back to life. But his parents would freak out, so we're not telling anyone. It's just the people in that room who remember it, anyway. And Kurt, 'cause he felt it in his brain." Mercedes shivered and hugged herself. From their previous discussions, Sam knew that Mercedes thought that being brought back would be even worse than dying. She didn't think it was anyone's place to make that call.

Sam swallowed hard. He didn't dare move, even though he wanted to shake. Finn was a lot more like Jean Grey than he'd ever thought. Someone had actually died and been brought back to life. This was getting worse every minute. Forget normal people being turned into bait; even superheroes didn't have an easy time of it. Some plots were so much more entertaining when they stayed on the page.

"I talked to Mike and Tina," Mercedes said. "We've bounced around some ideas, and they're coming up with more, too."

"About what?" Sam asked. She seemed happier talking about whatever that new topic was, and he went gladly with the change.

"What we want to do with our powers," Mercedes said, "that doesn't mean being 'superheroes.'" She risked laying her hand on his, very gently. "That would never have a bunch of aliens and an evil Jesse St. James kidnapping you to make a point."

"I still like superheroes," Sam said, feeling like he should clarify. That was the best thing he'd heard since getting abducted, but a younger version of himself was outraged at how quickly his opinions had changed. "I still think they're great."

"You just want to take one step back from everything."

If that younger Sam was disappointed, he could shut right the hell up. "Right."

"Well," Mercedes said, "we've got some ideas for that step." Sam listened, but fatigue began to overtake him. Mercedes stroked his head when it became clear that he hadn't heard more than a few stray words. It felt nice, and he drifted further toward sleep. "I'll tell you later. No need to rush. Now, we've got time."

* * *

Blaine's parents were still inside his room when Kurt tried visiting again. He hadn't expected that, and Kurt slammed on an invisibility shield without even checking to see if a nurse might be near. They were talking about him, he realized after only a few seconds' eavesdropping. He backed away, unwilling to hear anyone else's analysis until his ego had recovered from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s file, and walked to the cafeteria. He'd picked up a dull but healthy salad and was comparing that with a tempting bag of chips before he realized that he was still invisible, and the people around him were eying the floating food.

They barely blinked when he popped back into visibility, and returned to their meals. Right: New York. A person could have powers and still blend right in. He ate his salad and chips very slowly, so the Andersons would have plenty of time to leave before he returned. (Getting both options probably hadn't been the right way to resolve things.)

Thankfully, they were gone when he returned. Kurt knocked on the doorframe and smiled tremulously. The sight of Blaine, pale but whole and _alive_ , made his heart swell. "Hey. Are you awake?"

Blaine's eyes opened and he smiled at Kurt. He looked tired, drugged, or both. "You're okay."

"And so are you," Kurt said. "You... you are, right?"

Blaine gestured to a chair near his bed. Kurt rushed to take it. "I'm okay and I'm going to be okay. I'm all bandaged up and my blood type had plenty of bags in the refrigerator. Puck got me here in time." His eyes dropped from Kurt's, and he looked somewhere far beyond the hospital walls. "He saved my life."

"I love you," Kurt said when he realized that he hadn't, yet.

"And I love you," Blaine said. 

But there was something in his tone that was worrisome. Dangerous. It was like strong currents lurking in clear waters. It shouldn't have been, with how Blaine stared at him with such adoration, but Kurt grew more nervous by the second as Blaine continued. "You were amazing. You broke into a building and rescued me, and were going to save my life even if it ended yours in the process. I couldn't ask for a more amazing, brave, perfect boyfriend."

"Same," Kurt said, and then hoped Blaine would stop talking. Something was wrong.

"I remember what it felt like when that bullet hit me," Blaine said after a long pause. "When Jesse abducted us, he didn't kill us, and I thought that maybe we'd be fine." Blaine shook his head. "But it happened, just like I'd expected. It was only delayed a bit. And on the way to the hospital, I knew it again: I was going to die."

"You are _not_ going to die," Kurt said, aching at the emotion in Blaine's voice even as he felt a selfish stab of relief. Blaine only sounded strange because of the night's painful memories. All right, Kurt could help him with those. They'd work through things together, and everything would be fine.

"I'm going to die," Blaine retorted with a sad smile.

"What, when you're a hundred years old?" Kurt waved that off. "Don't count on it. I'm sure all those future scientists will have discovered immortality by then."

"Kurt."

Kurt refused to let Blaine raise that horrible topic again. "Hopefully it won't be too long before they figure that immortality out, or we'll be very badly preserved. I don't mind looking _distinguished_ , but—"

"Kurt," Blaine said. He said it softly that time, and Kurt went quiet. "I'm going to die, and I can't be your Gwen Stacy."

"What?" Kurt asked in a small voice. Managing to pluck the story from his memory, he shook his head. "No, no. That's not a problem. Because I'm not going to be any sort of superhero. We talked about this, remember? Auditions and applications and everything we already decided on." He swallowed. "You remember that, right?" Of course he wasn't going to join the organization that had willingly condemned him to being miserable, alone, and friendless. The decision was easy.

Even if he loved Carole. Even if he respected the Berrys. Even if he felt like he needed to live up to Sue's final request. Even if....

"I remember that you said that," Blaine agreed. "And I remember us talking about those mutants you saw in Columbus." He looked at Kurt for what felt like a very long time. "All of you saved them, didn't you? It wasn't just seeing them. It wasn't just some little bit of help. You saved their lives."

"I... of course we did."

"You want to help people with the powers you have," Blaine said, staring at where his hands were folded on the hospital blankets. "I've basically been saying that you shouldn't, because I was worried that you'd put yourself in danger. But I've realized that if I was asking you not to help people when you could, then I was asking you to be less of yourself. To hold yourself back. Tonight, all of you? You saved tens of millions of people." Blaine said the last bit with open wonder.

"I wasn't really helping there," Kurt said. Desperation grew, even as he didn't entirely comprehend what was happening. "I just saved—"

"Three lives, all right," Blaine agreed. "Believe me, that matters just as much. I can't pretend that you can't do amazing things, even if you have to put yourself in danger for it. I watched it happen."

"So," Kurt said after a nervous pause, "what'd your parents say about me? How much work do I have to do to impress them again? I saw they were here."

Blaine wasn't sidetracked. "I can't be your Gwen Stacy. I can't. I've been holding you with me, but...." Blaine shook his head. The curtain-dappled light hit him as clouds moved away from the sun. "Once I said that you'd lost your entire life in New York just so we could meet. God, I don't know if I could think of anything more selfish. I don't know what was wrong with me. You're a real person, you're not just some character who deserves to be yanked around to tell a better story."

"Blaine, no," Kurt said when the roadsigns became too clear to ignore.

"If you ignore how you can help so many people in need, then you're not the boy I know and love," Blaine said. "I know that now. So many people out there should feel the relief I felt in that cell. And if you are that boy, then it won't be too long before someone kills me. Just to prove a point to you." A tear spilled from one beautiful eye. "I don't just want to be a character in your story, either. A plot point. I don't want to die."

"You won't die," Kurt said, lunging forward to grab his hand. "I won't let you. I won't let _them._ "

"So every single second of every single day, I'll be looking over my shoulder," Blaine said. "Wondering when a blow to the back of my head is coming." His voice wavered.

"I don't have to be a superhero," Kurt said. "And then I won't have any enemies. No one will try to make any sort of point with you. Blaine, just _stop._ "

"So if you saw those mutants in Columbus, you'd let them die."

"I... no," Kurt said, frustrated. "But that wouldn't... I mean, that wouldn't be dangerous. No one would care if I saved them."

"If you'd gotten me to safety, would you have willingly ignored twenty million people's lives still at risk? All those families on the Central Park carousel?" Blaine's face twisted for a second, ugly with heartbreak before he managed to get it under control, and Kurt wanted to sob. "Would you let all those people die if you thought you had a chance of stopping it? Honestly? Would you really, truly walk away and let them burn, and start thinking about a new audition song?"

Kurt didn't even try to lie.

"I still want to be your friend, but—"

"Don't say it," Kurt begged him. Both of their eyes swam wetly with tears. They spilled free on their cheeks. He swallowed around a massive lump and choked out, "It's not real until you say it."

"I'm not going to look at schools in New York," Blaine said. "I had plans. Before." Before Kurt, he meant. "Chicago, Northwestern, Duke, Brown, Boston, Cornell." When Kurt didn't say anything, Blaine sniffled hard and said, "I want you to be amazing. I just... maybe it makes me selfish, but I want that, too. I don't want to die. I don't want to die to prove a point. This hurts worse than getting shot, but I don't want to die."

Blaine wouldn't ask Kurt to ignore his powers, and Kurt had powers that let him take off at a second's notice, whenever any problem arose. Kurt couldn't ask Blaine to ignore his fear or reduce himself to a target again. After all: even more than Blaine, Kurt knew what it felt like to die. He'd felt it with Finn. If Kurt hadn't wholly joined him in death, he'd come very close. No one he cared for should learn what it was like to fade like that, not until they'd lived a long and whole life.

Still, Kurt felt ready to rip his heart out of his chest so emotions would stop choking him. "Cornell, Brown, Boston... they're all close to New York." He sucked in a deep breath. "For visits. If you want to come. As a friend." He broke on the last word and Kurt huddled into a tiny ball on his seat. "I love you," Kurt said, hoping against hope that it would make a difference.

"Please don't," Blaine said. His voice said that if Kurt pushed him, he'd rescind everything he'd said. He would stay right where they'd always been. He'd put up with the fear and threats to be with Kurt, for the rest of his life. He'd be a target. 

Forever.

And he was right. He deserved more than that. "Not Princeton?" Kurt asked. His voice still shook. "It seems like you would like Princeton."

"My dad knows someone from there. He hates him. I'd be disowned," Blaine said, visibly thankful for Kurt accepting everything.

"That makes sense," Kurt said with a nod. "Well. You shouldn't pick Duke. The heat and humidity. You'd be a complete mess an hour after you got there."

"Good point," Blaine said.

"Mmmhmm," Kurt said, and then made the mistake of meeting his eyes. "Well, okay, I need to go cry until I want to throw up."

"Me too," Blaine said. He stayed silent as Kurt walked to the door, and only then said, "Please let me stay your friend."

"You'd better," Kurt said around a shaky smile, but then his facade failed. He took one step away from the door, and then another, and took the rest of the distance to the bathroom at a run. He stayed in there a long time, washing away his tears in the sink and blowing his nose on single-ply paper towels.

Unbidden, the image hit him of Blaine at Duke: styling products sticky with humidity on his head, and curls springing free in patches. Kurt laughed, choking, until tears returned. Yes, they'd both had plans for what their lives would be like, but they'd made them on false pretenses. Kurt Hummel said that brainwashed boy with his face didn't matter, but he couldn't pretend he could leave Kurt Hutton behind. 

That was that, then. He'd left his swords in his room, like it proved some sort of point.

He might as well go get them.

* * *

"I'm just not worth anything," Finn said as he stared out of his window, facing toward a distant, unseen forest of skyscrapers. He didn't mumble it. He didn't shrink down under the words. He'd simply accepted it as a fact, like him being tall or having dark hair. That was what made Rachel's heart ache the most.

"You are, Finn," she said. "I can't... you have to believe me."

He raised a stack of papers and tapped it pointedly. "The S.H.I.E.L.D. telepath wrote all about me." He started reading from the formal report. "I'm 'cowardly, entitled, and unintelligent.' Oh, and they just pushed me a little bit toward being a jerk. Apparently, all that entitlement meant I'd stomp all over everyone if I got the chance. And being a dumb coward, well, I guess I'd do whatever people told me." Death seemed to have made him assess his life, and he didn't like what he saw.

Rachel snatched the file from him, scanned it quickly, and jabbed her finger at one line. "You're also caring, empathetic, and well-intentioned. They listed our weaknesses _and_ strengths, Finn. I'm selfish and abrasive. They didn't even have to change the town to make sure I'd barely even have any friends." Maybe that should have hurt more than it did, but Finn was alive. She did have friends, now. Screw that assessment.

"Wow," said a dull voice from the hallway. "That sounds familiar." Kurt walked mechanically forward. His expression was brighter than his tone, but it was a clear mask. His eyes were as red as she'd ever seen them. "Were you also 'coldly superior?'"

Rachel managed a wan smile. "No. 'Fiercely arrogant.'"

"Well. Using the right adjectives is very important. Blaine and I broke up." Kurt's lower lip wobbled as Finn and Rachel stared at him. "I won't let people die and he doesn't want to die, so we broke up. It's all for the best. We're still friends. I just sort of want to jump off the roof or something, but I'll be fine."

He didn't sound fine. "I'm sorry," Rachel said gently, and squeezed his hand. Kurt, drawing a deep breath, nodded a silent thank you. 

Kurt opened his mouth, began to say something, and then choked on whatever words he'd been forming. "I'm sorry," he said as he began to strap his swords to his belt. "I love you, and I know you need it, but I can't boost you up _again._ Not right now." He looked desperately apologetic to Finn, but he still vanished through the door as quickly as he'd arrived.

Finn watched him go, haunted. "I always got handed everything next to some of you guys. It's unreal." He looked away from the door, toward Rachel. "Don't you even remember how you said we might break up?"

It took Rachel a second to remember what he meant: how she'd stormed out after he'd slapped a mental shield on Kurt's memories. That hardly seemed to matter, now. 

He tensed, then slumped. "My brain's still kind of messed up," Finn said. "I'm not trying to read your thoughts. Some just float in, and so I heard that you don't care, and that you've forgiven me. For all I know, everyone doesn't even care that I shot Sue."

"Of course they don't," Rachel said gently. Maybe they had a therapist attached to the hospital's staff. Clearly, Finn could use someone to talk to. She couldn't even imagine how traumatic death must be. "Finn, that wasn't your fault. And of course Kurt and I have forgiven you. You...." She couldn't bring herself to say 'died.'

"That shouldn't just erase it, though," Finn said. His gaze settled back on the window. "It didn't make my life any different. It's so weird how... how some celebrity will die and everyone who hated them will fall all over themselves saying how great they were."

"Finn, all right, you haven't been perfect," Rachel said, and he gave her a weak but true smile. She'd have to tread carefully. He wanted to hear harsh truths, but was clearly in fragile mental condition. After struggling for the right words, she gave up and asked the obvious. "Finn, why don't you think you're worth us caring about you?"

"I was who they used to kill her," Finn said instantly. It seemed far too easy for him to find reasons. "I made decisions about what Kurt was allowed to think, even though it turned out that Puck was actually perfect for him back then. I'm not the best singer and I keep getting lead. I'm not the best _person_ and I'm popular. They _made_ me popular, and I was a complete asshole with it. I'm not the best son, and our dad ignored Kurt in favor of me, all because...." He shuddered and looked away. "I don't want to say everything he thought."

"Finn—"

"I kept saying I was a team captain, and I don't even know why I'm calling myself a hero."

"Finn, please let me talk." Rachel waited for him to nod, sheepish. "There is something special there, Finn," Rachel said. "Do you want to know how to earn it?"

After a second of surprise that he _could_ earn it, and that he hadn't been made unworthy forever, Finn nodded. "Yeah."

"Earn it," she repeated, and squeezed his hand when he looked confused. "We're both going to have to earn our way. My dad asked me if I would stop a villain before any cameras came, or whether I'd wait to make sure everyone knew what I was doing. Well, no one had any idea what we were doing last night. They never will. It's still the best feeling I've ever had. Knowing that New York is still here is amazing. Seeing you alive again was a million times better than standing on a Nationals stage."

He thought about that for a long time. "So you don't want to be famous any more?" Finn asked, and sounded genuinely confused.

"Oh," Rachel said with a knowing smile, "I'm going to be famous. But my dad was right. What I'm doing has its own rules, and it's important enough that I'm going to do it the right way, even if it takes longer. I'm going to throw all my energy into deserving the title of 'superhero.' Once I'm comfortable with that, _then_ I'll start thinking about getting my logo on sheets and t-shirts." Her smile faltered. What had Jacob thought just before he died?

Who all had died in Lima, either as a target or as collateral damage? 

She would earn that title. For her, and for them.

"I know it took me over," Finn said quietly, "but I still feel like I need to make it up to her." He must have heard her thoughts again.

"All right," Rachel said. "Make it up to Sue. If you think you've been given too much, then... then work in the trenches, Finn. Do the grunt work. We'll both put in our time, and you'll know that you've earned any respect you're given. I'll know that I've earned being called a hero." She gestured loosely toward the window, and Manhattan beyond. "And then, well, when you're on top of the world again and I'm earth's most famous hero, then we'll know we came by it all fairly."

He managed a shaky smile. "That could work." Finn—her big, beloved Finn—looked sad again, and Rachel's heart ached. "So... where are we? And don't say me dying means there wasn't ever a problem."

"We're not breaking up," Rachel decided. "But... we're both going to be busy. And that's all right. We'll see what we do with our lives, and we'll move on to another step when...."

"When we've earned it," Finn completed.

"Right." Rachel embraced him, and for a while there was only the off-kilter rhythm of their breathing. "I thought I knew what my life would be, and now I don't even know if I'll be going to school. Maybe I should still go somewhere, but I don't know what I would study."

"New York was never real to me when you would talk about it before," Finn said. "And now it's more real than Ohio, and I'm thinking of all the neighborhoods I definitely don't want to live in. Because I know them all." He hugged her, a bit too long, and asked quietly, "Do you think he'll forgive me?"

"I'm fairly sure that Kurt's forgiven Noah, Finn. The emotions there have to be higher." She looked up and met his eyes. "And I know you don't want to hear this as an excuse, but I only remember seeing you die. It's still there in his head, firsthand. I think he'd forgive you anything right now, even if he needs to be alone."

"Maybe it's selfish, but I hope so," Finn said. Apparently, he could deal with Rachel staying angry with him more easily than his brother. "Tomorrow's our birthday."

"Well, happy birthday," Rachel said, and kissed him. "Early."

* * *

All day, Puck had been trying to avoid anywhere that Kurt might be. He knew Kurt had to be spending most of his time at Blaine's side. When patient visiting hours were over Kurt might start mother henning Finn, or maybe he'd hang out with Rachel or Mercedes in search of a sympathetic friend. It was hard to predict, and so Puck wound up staying entirely off the floor that S.H.I.E.L.D. had reserved for them.

"Hey," he asked an agent walking by. "Can I leave? I mean, I'll come back. I just want to go for a run." The safest avoidance tactic would be leaving the hospital's walls entirely. 

After verifying something on her handset, the agent nodded at him. "Here," she said and clipped a small metal square to his collar. "Don't remove that."

"Whatever, thanks," Puck said, and walked out into the summer air. In theory, their powers were stable and they were once again free citizens, without any need for further S.H.I.E.L.D. control. In reality, they were being kept there until the agency was one hundred percent, totally, mind-numbingly positive that they were safe to release into the wild. That was probably a homing beacon she'd clipped to him.

Puck set off at a jog. He suspected it would be a bad idea to go near a ferry dock or bridge, and so he let interior roads serve as his jogging trails. He wasn't that much faster, he noted as he began to slowly ramp up his speed, and he felt just a bit stronger than he'd been before their powers stabilized. Where he really felt like he'd benefitted was in his natural armor. Puck wasn't going to hurry to test it, but he was pretty sure he could take just about any attack someone might dish out and come back for more.

Thinking about his powers was safe. It kept his brain occupied until he'd gone halfway around the island. He barely noticed the occasional strange looks from the locals as he ran past them, well over the speed limit. But that safety couldn't last forever, and his thoughts wandered.

He remembered everything: his elementary school, his old room, nine different first New York dates. (Seven girls he'd probably never see again, and then Rachel and Kurt. Puck harshly ignored the last one. Kurt was the one topic he refused to let himself think about.) He remembered his birth sister, Miri, and wondered whether she'd been brainwiped, too, and stuck in some tiny town in Texas or Oregon or South Dakota. He'd have to track her down. Once he did, he'd have two sisters. That'd be great. He was a good big brother. At least he knew she was safe in the meantime, without being targeted for powers like him. Hopefully she'd been given a good new family, wherever she was.

He remembered his first mom. Puck missed her so hard that it hurt.

What was he supposed to do now? He still wanted to graduate, he supposed, but he didn't know whether he was supposed to be a hero full-time. Hell, maybe he should stay in Ohio. He could do some good in Columbus or Cleveland, and he'd never run the risk of seeing the happy couple chatting it up in Manhattan. He and Lauren hadn't plotted out any sort of future like _those two_ had, but if they did stick together, it didn't have to involve New York. Even during the excitement of Nationals, she hadn't loved the place. It was too expensive, too loud, and had too many people.

He missed home, but he didn't have to go back. He didn't have to.

When Puck returned to the hospital, he felt more lost than when he'd left. Showering sometimes centered his thoughts, but in that strange, tiny bathroom, it just unsettled him more. He walked back into his room, saw Lauren, and didn't feel anything but tired. He owed her the truth about everything. This was going to be painful.

"Hey," Lauren said before he could begin. "Uh, we need to talk."

"Yeah, we do," Puck said. He wondered what she was going to say. Maybe he should let her go first, since she might not want to see him any more after he explained how he'd spent the past month falling back in love with someone. She wasn't a girl who would take being cheated on very well. Even if he'd never done anything physical, it still might count.

"So, here's the thing." Puck looked at Lauren when she began, and then waited patiently for her to continue. She couldn't easily find words, which wasn't like her. "I just spent however many hours telling a bunch of agents what happened to us."

"I bet they can be pretty rough," Puck said.

"No." Lauren studied her hands. "They were freaking nice. Like they thought I'd break."

Oh. Obviously, he shouldn't try to guess what was going on. Puck stayed quiet.

"And they looked me over for, like, an hour and a half to make sure those creepy energy whatevers didn't do something to me." Lauren sat on the edge of his bed and glowered at the wall. "Making sure I wasn't in _danger._ "

"Well," Puck began uncertainly, "they were seriously creepy. I mean, they went into Finn's brain and took him totally over. Shelby had all those cops mind-zapped, too. Maybe it's a good thing that they really checked you out?" From the look he got in return, probably not.

"I said the one thing that I couldn't handle is being treated like I'm weak." Lauren turned unhappily toward the door, in the direction of all those agents. "Look, I'm not gonna win a gold on the balance beam, you know?"

"Okay," Puck said when she seemed to want acknowledgment. Yeah, she wasn't exactly a flipping gymnastics machine like Quinn. (Or Kurt. Or Mike, his brain harshly added, so he wouldn't end on the topic he was supposed to avoid.)

"But all those tiny leotard girls aren't going to be able to wrestle like I can, or bench press what I can handle." Lauren smacked her fist against the mattress. It rebounded. "You put them in my world, they're going to look pretty pathetic."

"And?" Puck said when she hesitated.

Lauren met his eyes and smiled, lopsided and sad. "But if you tell me that I'm going to do the balance beam for the rest of my life? Well, now I feel pretty useless."

"Then don't do the balance beam," Puck said. She seemed to be making some larger point, but he couldn't figure out what it was. "They freak me out ever since that new Final Destination trailer, anyway."

"Wow. It's a good thing you're pretty," Lauren said fondly, but her good mood ebbed again. "If I listen to what the world says I have to be, then I'd feel bad about myself. And I don't. I'm awesome in all these other ways that matter." A shadow moved across her eyes. "Well, all last night, aliens had me on the balance beam. And all today, S.H.I.E.L.D. kept me on it. I never got to bench press anything."

Puck frowned slightly as he tried to figure out where she was going.

"Being surrounded by superheroes... I'm going to be a damsel in distress. I'm strong around normal people, but I'm not strong when the comparison is 'can carry a few tons' or 'shoots glaciers out of her hands.'" She looked unhappy, and Puck would have helped if he'd only known how. "I can be great. I am great. I don't want to set myself up so I'm always thinking that I'm not."

"You're dumping me," Puck realized.

"You're going to do fine," Lauren said. She sounded genuinely kind, but also like she'd long since accepted what was happening. "You're a freaking gorgeous superhero, come on. And I'm freaking gorgeous, too, so I'll do fine. Just... I'll do fine when I'm not around a balance beam. I'm going back to the weight room."

She was right. She'd been kidnapped just to prove a point to him, and she deserved to be so much more than bait. It wasn't like Puck had any solid superheroic plans, but she'd always know that the second he made a new enemy, she'd stop being Lauren Zizes, Kickass Chica, and once again become Lauren Zizes, Vulnerable Human. If he truly loved that she was strong and confident, then he should feel proud of her for making sure she stayed that way.

"You've practically got your own powers in my book," Puck said.

"Don't make me regret dumping you," Lauren said fondly. She reached over and tapped him on the shoulder. "I'm not even gonna pretend to ask you not to do the superhero bit. Even if you said you wouldn't, you'd start showing off the second that you got the chance."

He managed a small, false smile. It would have felt better if she'd said that Noah Puckerman wouldn't be able to resist helping someone. He still had a lot of work to do on himself. "I'm trying to be a good guy again," Puck said after pulling a chair around to directly face her. He wanted to meet her eyes when he forced himself to share the truth.

"You are a good guy, Puckerman."

He'd like to think so, but... Puck sighed, and felt worse when he caught sight of a S.H.I.E.L.D. logo on his table. Quinn must have dropped off his file. He wasn't ready to see what they'd said about him, not just yet. "I'm working on it," he eventually said, and turned back to Lauren. "So I got my memories back of New York. All of them. I haven't told you something about what happened back then."

"Okay," Lauren said, and frowned. Puck took at least a little pleasure from how she hadn't promised that they would stay friends. Of course they would. She didn't need to say it. They _were_ friends, and this wasn't happening with any anger between them. The concern from an unquestioned friend helped him through what he had to say.

"I was dating someone in, uh, the Awesomes. We didn't break up before we got memory zapped. I remember what it felt like to...." He shifted uncomfortably on his seat.

"Okay," Lauren said. "Did you do anything while we were—"

"No," Puck said immediately.

She nodded, her clear concern placated, and considered that. "Rachel, right?"

"I did date her for about a month," Puck said. "Dumped her when she got too annoying." Lauren laughed, like he'd known she would, and he jumped on her good mood while it lasted. "Kurt."

Lauren stared at him for a long and silent beat, and Puck swallowed. He didn't think she was homophobic at all, but.... "That's so hot."

His eyebrows raised.

"You should have told me you're into that," Lauren said and nudged him. "I have a whole folder on my computer we could have dug through." She sobered when she took in his mood. "So, you're pretty clearly in love with a guy who's dating someone else."

"Yeah."

"A guy you kept dumpstering." 

Puck flinched. "Yeah."

"Well," Lauren said, "you've really fucked this up." She held out her arms for a hug and he moved into them gladly. "Don't worry. We're both going to be great. The next few weeks'll just suck, and then we'll be better than ever." It was comforting to know that breaking up hurt her, too. Puck stayed in the hug for a long time.

"So, now I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with my life," Puck said as he fell back into his chair. "It sounds like they're lining up some parents to interview for Beth. People who can deal with her being powered, and who... you know. Are grown up. Who have houses and stuff." He would have loved to have kept Beth, but that would have been about him, not her. And if he was going to try to act like he was worth something....

"Of course you're worth something," Lauren said. "Remember? I found you in a port-a-potty. Now you're, like... a real boy."

"Oh. I said that out loud, huh?" Puck asked.

"Yeah." She tapped him on the shoulder again. "Hey, you've impressed me. Just keep being cool like that. And save more people."

"Thanks." A sigh escaped him, and Puck admitted, "Okay, I've gotta go be somewhere that's not here. Because I know this is the right thing to do, and I don't blame you for it, but it kinda feels like you kicked me in the nuts. And it's going to be a lot easier if I just don't see you for a while."

"Yeah," Lauren softly agreed. "Same here. Sorry. I just...."

"You deserve more than being bait," Puck said. "I know."

"Thanks."

Puck managed one last smile for her, and then left. 

If that was what Lauren needed, then he wondered what he deserved. He guessed that he wouldn't like the answer.

* * *

At least for some people, the path ahead them was simple. All Santana and Brittany had to do was decide the particular context of their upcoming superheroics. They knew they would do it again. Santana loved her powers and Brittany had finally seen what hers could do. They had no fear for each other's safety, nor for their own.

"I'll be able to get a good place in the city, at least," Santana said. "They said they'll give me a big fat graduation gift to cover an apartment." She tried to sound like she didn't care, and it was easier than she expected. It would be nice if she got more from her parents than money and pride, but she wasn't lacking for love elsewhere. "So," Santana began, and felt her cheeks darken. "It sounds like we can do whatever we want for next year. A new school or early graduation or tutors or whatever. And then we can move to New York."

"I liked the tutors," Brittany said thoughtfully. "I think I'm gonna go with them."

"Brit." Santana leaned in close, so their noses were almost touching. "I'm having a big moment."

"Oops. Sorry." Brittany met her gaze so sharply that she almost went cross-eyed.

"So, whenever we graduate and head back to New York, and I've got that check from my family bank account... you wanna get a place together?" Santana grinned more broadly than she'd known she could. "You know, as girlfriends? And walk outside?"

"As girlfriends?" Brittany said.

"Yep." Santana stole a quick kiss, and Brittany took one in return.

"That's pretty much the best thing ever," Brittany said.

"It sounds like there are other people who might want to talk to us about... you know, teams or government contracts or whatever. So we'll have to get all of that figured out."

"And I still need to get used to using my powers," Brittany said. It might take her years, or even decades, to totally understand what she could do. Santana wondered if she could pull off a time change again, or if it had been pure luck. Brittany was unpredictable but amazing, but then, Santana had always known that about her.

"Well," Santana said. "You can work on your powers with me. Right? I'm going to be there for you." And she would be, as Brittany came into her own.

"And I'll be there for you," Brittany said, and bumped her forehead against Santana's. She would, as Santana's heart became comfortable beating each second with love.

* * *

The next day, Kurt and Finn got special dispensation to take a ferry ride to Manhattan.

"Dad apologized for not knowing what clothes to bring," Kurt explained as they walked past a glass storefront. "He just grabbed whatever, for all of us. I guess it shows."

Finn looked down at his own clothes—a t-shirt and jeans—and then at Kurt's outfit. It was similarly simple. "Do we look bad?"

"You're fine. These colors just don't go together." The blue of the shirt and grey of the pants clashed. The blue needed to be either a bit lighter or bit darker, for deliberate contrast. Kurt managed to sound bright when he continued. "Which is why I'm supposed to use this to buy myself some birthday presents," he said, and flashed a credit card. "Dad said the sky was the limit. I don't think he understands how high the sky can get in Midtown Manhattan. I'll restrain myself."

As he wandered through the store and picked out a few pieces to try on, Kurt wondered if Burt knew how he was fulfilling every material fantasy Kurt had once clung to. From clothes to a giant car that was better suited for Los Angeles than New York, he'd given Kurt everything. Catalogs had been band-aids for Ohio's wounds. Now, shopping kept his attention off Blaine, and restraining himself became a real challenge. "So," Kurt began as he tried on a jacket in front of the nearest mirror, "what are we going to get you?"

"I don't need anything," Finn quickly said.

"Come on, it's both our birthday. And correct me if I'm wrong, but the older sibling is supposed to be the one who gets less and puts on a good face about it. You should be spoiled." The words were meant to be light, but they held too much truth for that. They didn't come out as lightly as Kurt had wanted. 

"Okay. Give me the chance to make up for all the years when I...." Finn sighed and tried again. "Let me play big brother. That's what I want for my birthday. Okay?"

"All right," Kurt said. He looked at himself in the mirror again. "That's so selfless. I still want this jacket."

"So get it."

Kurt did, along with a blue shirt in a better shade. He walked out wearing it. "How are you doing with remembering... well. You know." Dying.

"About as well as you," Finn said. Damn that telepathy. Even if Kurt hadn't quite died—and he honestly didn't know if he had—he'd still been given plenty of psychic trauma. They were both going to have nightmares for weeks to come, if not years. "You know, even with full powers, I still hear you all the time. Hopefully my shields go back up a little. You're loud."

"Sorry." It couldn't be easy to have Kurt's memories on top of his own.

"Still, it's better if I ask, instead of reading you." Finn glanced at him as they walked down the crowded sidewalk. "How are you doing with Blaine?"

"Every single minute is a victory march, because it's another that I've gone without bursting into tears." Kurt's voice shook before he reined it in. "If I were normal, we'd be together. If I were normal, he never would have been kidnapped. I would never assault a building or cut off some demon alien thing's head, or even just snap and make another invisible run through town."

"If you were normal," Finn said after almost half a block, "you still would have moved to New York. And for all you know, you would have gotten caught in some bad guy's explosions aimed at someone else. I looked it up last night, after Rachel and I talked. The 'collateral damage' in New York each year was... it was way too many people. It's hit Broadway, you know."

Kurt didn't say anything.

"Bad guys are gonna be out there whether we deal with them or not. Supervillains and murderers and guys who kick dogs and stuff. I don't know which kind I'm going to deal with, but I'm going to work at it. That's what I have to do. I talked to some of the others, and we're all going to help. Even if it's hard."

"It is hard," Kurt admitted. He didn't want to be alone again. 

"You won't be," Finn said, and slung his arm over Kurt's shoulders. Kurt leaned into him, despite the heat radiating off the sidewalk. It was a good time for Finn to act like a big brother.

* * *

There was another day of tests and interviews. Soon they would get to go home and figure out what the rest of their lives should be. Puck had almost made it to the buzzer. He'd avoided Kurt, so he wouldn't be reminded of everything he'd messed up. He avoided Finn, too. Until he knew what to think about Kurt, Puck couldn't figure out what to feel about Finn and those attempts to keep the two of them apart.

Hell, maybe Finn had done the right thing, after all. 

But would a _good guy_ think that Finn had done the right thing by making that decision for someone else? Probably not.

This was hard, and it sucked, and Puck didn't like it.

Occasionally he saw Kurt walking at the far end of a hallway, or rounding a corner. He was like a ghost, barely seen. Puck couldn't help but stare at him for those few precious seconds. 

Everything about that facility they'd been in was generic and unassuming. It was an angular concrete block, with no notable signs and no interesting designs. It could have been a prison or a factory for producing cheap school lunches. Only the objects inside made it interesting: incredible security systems and high-tech monitors and a machine generating a hole between worlds. The people facing those contents made it something epic. Puck didn't know if he'd ever be able to forget the sight of Kurt on the floor, spent and broken, and how he'd clearly pushed himself to his limits for someone else. Even if it hurt to know who that someone else was, Puck still wanted to reach for that heroism. If he'd sometimes felt like Kurt's life preserver in New York, Kurt had been his compass.

Eventually Puck saw enough of those tiny seconds to recognize the dark cloud over Kurt. Once it was almost literal; Kurt was standing in sunlight from a window, but shadows hung over his face. He must not realize that he was making illusions again. Considering that their powers had stabilized, something would have to be ripping him up inside to break down his walls that much.

Puck flashed back to a conversation on a warm summer night. How Blaine had thought that Puck would let him get an infection that would kill him. An infection like that would take a few days to show. Was he worried that....

No. It probably wasn't that; Puck had stayed away from most people, but someone would have told him if things were that bad. But when he rounded a corner and saw Kurt sitting alone in an empty hallway, Puck didn't scurry back around the corner. He had to know that Kurt wouldn't be left alone. Puck could handle it, but Kurt shouldn't have to.

"Hey," Puck said. His hands shoved deep into his pockets. Kurt looked so sad. Part of Puck wanted to make that sadness go away any way he could, but he managed to restrain himself. Puck compromised by sitting next to Kurt on the bench and staring at the same wall as him. "So, uh. Is everything okay?"

"It's really hard with you here," Kurt said softly. 

"Okay," Puck said. He knew when he wasn't wanted. "Have a nice life, I guess."

"Wait." Kurt's eyes closed. "You were good to talk to. Before, I mean. Just... please don't sound happy about this, all right? I can't take it."

"Okay," Puck repeated.

"Blaine and I broke up. So no, everything is not okay. He is going to live a long and healthy life away from me. We tried to lie. We couldn't. So we broke up. And the worst thing is?" Kurt asked, sounding ready to cry again even though he looked exhausted and dehydrated. "I feel like my world is ending, but this isn't even in my top five worst memories. My life has just been that horrible. I want to cry for a week, but at least I didn't just have my twin brother die inside my brain. That's my new bar for things _really_ being bad. I didn't get told that aliens had murdered my parents. I didn't have to cut off Coach Sylvester's arm and then watch her get shot in front of me. This is my life, this is what I have to look forward to.

"And," Kurt said, gulping in air when Puck let him continue, "then you're here. I remember everything. It's horrible. I was so in love with you that my chest just _hurt_ , all the time. I had all of these amazing emotions that would completely rip me apart if they got loose, and I just barely held on to them. When you would come near me, I didn't know if your heart was trying to keep mine safe, or break all those feelings free and just let us both disappear inside them. Forever."

"Lauren dumped me," Puck said. It was probably the wrong thing to say.

Kurt stared at him for a long second, and then laughed bitterly. He wiped at his eyes. "Of course she did. And of course Blaine did. Of course we're both unattached when I have every single memory back of everything we've ever done, and my heart hurts just being around you again."

Puck's chest ached, too. The wound of their old love was raw again. "I don't know about you, but it's not just... I don't just remember being in love. With you." Those feelings were right there. Everything had been unearthed, and they'd never said goodbye before things ended.

"Right," Kurt said. "Right. It's not just past tense. I remember everything like it was just happening to me, right this second." He turned to look at Puck. Their faces were very close. Puck's eyes roamed him, taking in the slight tilt to his eyes, the way his mouth curved, the heartbreaking way his face colored in anguish. "The boy I was supposed to be with forever just dumped me, and the other boy I am in love with—"

Puck's breath caught.

"Well," Kurt said. "I remember you saving my life with that car in Columbus. I remember you standing up to my father in Manhattan, and pulling me back into the light when no one else saw that I was standing in shadows." He blinked. His lashes were wet. "And I remember you throwing me into the trash. Yeah, it's all there."

Puck's hand closed around the file in his hand. He hadn't looked at it, yet. He'd kept finding excuses.

"Did they make you do it?" Kurt asked. Puck wasn't sure what he hoped to hear. He doubted Kurt knew, either. No more excuses. Quietly, Puck opened his file and scanned it for the relevant text. Kurt sat and waited.

> _PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS: SUBJECT XH1331-87-11  
>  APPELLATION: PUCKERMAN NOAH_
> 
> _INITIAL CONSULTANT ANALYSIS OF SUBJECT PSYCHE/INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS: Noah Puckerman makes acquaintances easily. It is more difficult for him to make true friends. Currently, his only true friendships are with Finn Hutton, Kurt Hutton, and Rachel Berry; he is also engaged in a romantic relationship with Kurt Hutton. Given the recommendations for Kurt Hutton and Rachel Berry's social futures, little attention needs to be paid to Noah Puckerman's behaviors. He is unlikely to form any other deep relationships when they have been separated. RECOMMENDATION: Once he has lost his memories of his current friends and partner, Noah Puckerman is likely to revert to his most basic behavior, and will again find it difficult to form meaningful bonds. His darker nature should be encouraged for insurance; not only with social positioning, but with psychic prompting. The extent of this prompting will be determined upon false memory application. I recommend having him maintain an ongoing friendship with Finn Hutton, however, as their worst traits are likely to play off the other's, particularly with this behavioral guidance._
> 
> _As for his personality, Noah Puckerman veers between a pleasantly gregarious nature with a strong and loyal nature toward his friends, and a walking manifestation of the id. Accordingly, he possesses a capacity for cruelty. He appears to have underlying issues with expecting failure of himself on major issues, and overcompensates for this with bluster in small interactions, sexual encounters, team competitions, et cetera. RECOMMENDATION: Noah Puckerman possesses a large ego. Given a position with high social power and little to ground him, he will indulge his own worst nature at others' expense. Meaningful relationships are unlikely to ever form and unearth his old connections._
> 
> _END ANALYSIS SUBJECT XH1331-87-11_

He didn't understand all of those words, but he certainly got the gist of what they'd decided about him. Puck swallowed hard and shoved the file back into its envelope.

"It's hard to hear, isn't it?" Kurt said. Puck wondered what he'd read in his, and nodded. "Well. Did they make you do it?" Kurt repeated.

"No," Puck said quietly. Though he could have zeroed in on that 'psychic prompting' as complete forgiveness, he knew it'd be the wrong thing to do. That psychic had identified all of that behavior in him just waiting to come out. If he was going to be a decent person, he needed to admit that he wasn't psychically controlled; he was psychically drunk. All they'd done was remove his inhibitions. 

He took a deep breath. Puck felt like he was willingly giving up heaven, right at the gates. "No, they weren't flat-out controlling anything. They just made me more of a jerk. It's not like they forced me to throw you around. That's all on me."

Kurt nodded slowly. He looked utterly broken. Abandoned. "I see."

If they hadn't changed Puck at all, he was unforgivable. If they'd controlled him, he was blameless. Puck didn't know what this middle option meant. "I don't want to be like that again," Puck said. He hated knowing that such behavior was inside of him, needing only a nudge. "Okay, so they pushed me into being more of a dick. Still, at the end of the day, it was me. Just me." 

The gates had closed and now he was locking them shut. He didn't have to. But it was the right thing to do. "And anyway," Puck continued when Kurt looked at him sadly, "you deserve better than some guy who just needed some psychic cheerleading to be, well, like I was. So I'm just going to figure out how not to be an asshole. Ever."

"Do you even know how good you once were?" Kurt asked quietly. "That Noah Puckerman needed more than a tiny nudge. I promise."

"Still. This was less than them taking total control. And I don't like what that says about me."

"I need to go," Kurt said and stood. "This is killing me. Every single second I have to fight back the urge to go tell Blaine I'll never use my powers again. To lie, so I can get him back. And now I have to stop myself from saying that everything you did to me is okay, because it's not. I want to forgive you everything and I can't. Not when I remember feeling you around me and then a week later you were throwing me away."

Kurt began to walk away and Puck didn't protest. When Kurt turned back around, it was entirely his decision. "That was almost funny," he said, teary. "How everyone just assumed that between the two of us, I would...."

Puck remembered the first time he'd come with Kurt. They'd been making out and Kurt started grinding against his denim-clad erection with innocent, awed enthusiasm. More than the friction, it was that wonder that set Puck off. He ripped a hole in his jeans, but thankfully, the tight material had kept him angled off to the side. Kurt only got a long, thin bruise, like he'd slammed himself against a countertop. After a short while of being horrified at his own body, Puck realized the answer was obvious.

"You didn't want to take any chance of hurting me." Kurt swallowed. "I. God. I can't. I need to go."

He disappeared around a corner and Puck sank back onto his seat. He'd lost everything. Lauren was gone. Beth would be adopted again, and this time she'd probably go to total strangers. And no matter how much Kurt loved Puck, he couldn't just forgive what their relationship had warped into. Puck understood that. He couldn't forgive himself, either.

All he had left, then, was himself. The only way to prove that asshole in Lima wrong was to be the guy from New York, and never let his temporary self out to play again.

Puck nodded, wiped his hands on his jeans, and stood. He wanted to find the agents handling Beth's new adoption. This time, he'd find her a perfect family. And then he'd work on being himself again.


	28. Origin Story

Now that they were free citizens, there was nothing holding them back from computers and smart phones. Rachel looked at the Lima news and felt her heart grow dull and heavy. Funerals would start soon. Some names she recognized, some she didn't, but there were far too many. One would have been too many. Shelby couldn't have stopped by all of those houses, but fires had been set across town. The Rifts she'd brought had probably killed anyone who got too close like a person slapping a mosquito. 

Amazingly, the news celebrated the Awesomes, rather than condemning them for what they'd lured to Lima. No one seemed to have made the connection that the Rifts had come in search of those teenagers. Instead, the Awesomes been credited with stopping the attack; clearly, no one else could have done so. Their team fansite was still up and running. All of them were more famous than they'd been the day before.

They were becoming famous by standing on the backs of innocent corpses. Rachel knew they hadn't chosen to be sent to Lima. It could have been any town. Their foes had cared less than nothing for human life; they'd come to their world with the intention of destroying it all. The deaths could have happened anywhere.

Still, they'd happened.

Even if all of them seemed shell-shocked about what they'd faced, Rachel saw the same determination in everyone's eyes: whether on the front pages or in charity kitchens, they were going to help. She sighed and closed their fanpage, and wondered which keyboard warrior had written the latest blog post praising them. She'd earn fame again. Not like this. The next time, she'd really deserve it.

A deep, resonant voice called after her as she left the small internet center at the hospital. "I came back from a mission and heard about everything that had gone on. I asked our scientists. They said I could do another solo time skip to talk to you all, before someone else got here and filled your heads with garbage. It took some tricky calibration."

"We've met before," Rachel said as the large man approached her. She couldn't recall his name offhand, but she remembered seeing that eyepatch staring back at her as he informed them that their parents were dead.

"Colonel Nick Fury, head of S.H.I.E.L.D.," he said. "I'm sorry you had to go through everything. And I'm glad the situation's been resolved."

That was apparently all the apology were going to get, even after their lives had been manipulated like characters in the government's play. And yet, Rachel couldn't blame him, not with the firsthand knowledge of what it would have been like if they had been found, captured, and drained. She could remember Carole telling them every event that was competing for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attention. More than likely, they weren't the only ones who'd saved lives that night. The organization had done what they'd had to do in order to protect the world. Maybe that acceptance meant that she was growing up, or maybe she was just too tired to argue. It had been a long week.

"You came back to today," Rachel said after musing on all of that. "But you could have come earlier and avoided everything." He could have warned Sue. They could have identified the facility and never come near it.

"Maybe. Or maybe things would have fallen apart in ways we can't even predict. If something works out well enough, I've learned not to throw away a decent solution in favor of a perfect possibility. The odds usually don't turn out in our favor. You saved the world. That has to be enough." He looked at her meaningfully. "I've learned to make tough decisions, that work the best for everyone."

Yes, she supposed he had.

"Sounds like you saw some action in Columbus, too."

Rachel blushed. Were they going to be held accountable for those destroyed buildings? She might still want to go to college. Anthem would need an identity during the day. She didn't want to spend all of her college fund on campus repairs.

Fortunately, Fury didn't seem to be going down that route. "Now that we know it was Shelby Corcoran, we dug into her records. Her search history was something else. After a while she began looking for signs of _anything_ interesting going on around Lima. Even with our cover story, she was desperate to reveal you kids, because she didn't have any other leads. The more time that passed, the more she grabbed for anything that might help her." Fury snorted. "Finally, she just broke into this message forum and flat-out lied. Told any goon dumb enough to take the bait that a medical procedure at Ohio State was actually a lab for superpowers, and they should go check it out."

"The Wrecking Crew," Rachel said, thoughtful and distant. "They thought they could get powers there. That was why they came."

"Yeah," Fury said. "Well, with all the pieces put together, we could see what she was really doing: dying. She knew she didn't have much time left before that thing inside her drained her dry, and you were her last Hail Mary. She used those Crew idiots like bait, hoping that she'd been right all along, because she didn't have any other leads. Hoping that you really were there. That you'd show up to fight when some real superpowered bad guys stopped by to kill anyone in their way."

"And we did," Rachel realized, resigned. "We played right into her hands and revealed ourselves."

"Sure did."

Her head dropped. They were so untrained. Foolish. "I can't believe how stupid I've been."

"You broke into a top-secret facility that was filled with a bunch of very nasty enemies," Fury said. "Were you in charge?"

"Yes," Rachel said. Even if it weren't wrong to duck responsibility, she doubted she could get away with it. "I don't think I really managed to do that much, but... yes."

"And you broke into another top-secret facility before we ever brainwashed you." Fury's eyebrow rose. "You were in charge then, too."

"Yes, I was," Rachel said. She must be in so much trouble.

Astonishingly, Fury smiled. "You must have had a hell of a time figuring out how everyone could work together."

"I... no, not really," Rachel said. "That was easy. I always knew we could come together like a symphony if we really focused." He looked intrigued, and so she told him all the relevant information: Puck getting them onto the roof, Mercedes fueling Tina's powers, everything. Fury should have been angry at her description of how they'd circumvented their security. She didn't understand why his smile only grew.

Eventually, he said, "You've got potential."

It was difficult to believe what she was hearing. The head of the agency thought that? "Thank you," Rachel said uncertainly.

"Serious potential. The kind that some org would love to have."

This was not where she'd expected the conversation to go. "I can't see myself in S.H.I.E.L.D.," Rachel demurred.

"Neither can I," Fury said. "You'd blow your cover on the first day. Probably cause an international incident." Rachel blushed, but he continued like he hadn't insulted her. "But you've got a solid powerset, especially now that you're stable, and some great leadership skills. You just need to work with some people who can show you how to use everything."

"You mean... apprentice with someone," Rachel said. "Put in my time. Learn the ropes, learn how to be the _right_ kind of hero."

"If you like cliches, sure." 

She went very still for a long time, and wondered if they'd been filming their rooms. The offer was just too perfect. "Who would I apprentice with?" Rachel asked when she realized she had no idea which very proper, presumably old hero would instruct her in the ways of leadership and superheroic etiquette.

"The Avengers," Fury said mildly. 

Rachel's eyes widened.

"If you think you can put up with them," he added. "They're S.H.I.E.L.D.'s main point of contact in the superhero business. Tony'd never admit it, but he knows they need younger blood if they're going to stay relevant. Maybe you'd stay on with them, maybe not, but...."

"The Avengers," Rachel managed.

"Just tell Stark that you have a boyfriend, repeat it five or six times, and you'll be fine. And don't piss off Banner. That can get messy." Fury looked like he was holding back a smile. "You caught some people's attention. The masks in this city heard that you kids stopped them from being burned to well-toned crisps. Believe me, if you want to reach for the stars... it's a possibility."

Rachel looked toward the northeast. No matter how many turns she made inside the hospital, she knew which direction Manhattan was. She stared that way for a long breath, and then looked back. "So, in theory, we could launch our full careers right now. It sounds like we have all the support in the world. We could skip everything in-between."

Fury's brow rose, and he didn't argue with her.

"Mr. Fury," Rachel said, "I would be honored to start my apprenticeship with all of those heroes. I mean, once I've earned my high school diploma, and know exactly how I want to carve out my life in the city. I might want to go to school, too. That can all be settled later."

His smile broke free. "You're setting conditions on apprenticing with the Avengers."

"They want me, don't they?" Rachel replied, her smile just as big.

She'd do everything the right way. She wouldn't rush anything. She wouldn't skip any steps.

And then, from the sound of it, she'd be a star.

* * *

"You'll need to return those, you know."

Kurt turned toward the strange voice. "Colonel Fury," he said as he placed the man. He could remember hearing him say that their parents were dead. "Return what?"

Fury gestured to his belt, and the two sheaths attached there. "Those. I'm amazed they let you carry them around a hospital, by the way."

His grip tightened around the hilts. Kurt didn't realize he'd done so until Fury cleared his throat. "They were a gift," Kurt said. "I don't have to return a gift."

"And who was the gift from?"

"Sue Sylvester." Kurt forced his shoulders back. "She wants me to use these. And I'm going to wear them to her funeral."

Fury's eye clouded with sadness. "Sorry. Her funeral's not open to the public. She's made some powerful enemies and it's a bad idea to let them get near an agent's body." He saw Kurt, stricken, about to protest. "Kid, I knew her for a hell of a lot longer than you did. Don't try to say it's easy, because it's not."

"She _wanted_ me to have these, though," Kurt said. Was he seriously going to have to give up everything? Be slowly stripped of each thing that might give his life direction? His hands shook as he gripped his swords.

Fury studied Kurt for a second, and then walked toward him. Kurt let the man circle him, but turned to face him with each step. "Most of those lengths are the finest steel available on this planet," Fury said. "And then the cutting edges are a custom adamantium alloy. Just about as rare as it gets, and that pair cost S.H.I.E.L.D. about two hundred K to make. It's why we only give them to certain agents." He looked Kurt over. "Agents who aren't supposed to just hand them over to some kid."

"Well, she did." His knuckles were white. "She said I had potential. She saw real potential in me, and you know what? I do have it. I got down to the sixth sub-basement of a facility that you designed yourselves. If my brother hadn't zapped my brain in the middle of a laser field, I could have gotten past all of your security systems. I broke in, I dodged bullets, I beat S.H.I.E.L.D. at its own game, and if I don't even get to go to her funeral, then I am _not_ giving them back!" By the end of his rant, Kurt had stalked up to Nick Fury, the better to yell at him. At least he'd had the sense not to pull a sword on the man.

"Sorry," Fury said, unshaken. "Those can only be used by agents." He saw Kurt about to unload on him again. His grin was wide and sudden. "So. You want a job?"

Kurt stared at him.

"Is that a yes?"

"I'm not sure what to say," Kurt said.

"Sue Sylvester was a talented and...." His shoulders heaved with a sigh. "Intimidating woman. I'm only saying that now, because she never would have let me hear the end of it, otherwise. If she gave those swords to you, I'm willing to trust her judgment." Fury began to look slightly annoyed as Kurt hesitated. "You're holding swords that can cut through diamond; try to look a little more excited."

"No, they can't," Kurt said. The man had left him completely off-balance, and he wanted to regain some power by correcting him. They cut through flesh and blood. Not metal. Not _diamond_.

"Have you tried?"

"No," Kurt admitted.

"You don't know everything." Fury smirked. "So you don't even know what you'd be turning down. Well—"

"I'd be helping," Kurt said. "I might be doing it in ways that hurt for a while, but ultimately, I'd be helping. We thought she was making our lives hell. She was saving them." Fury nodded, and Kurt took long, deep breaths.

If what he'd gone through was going to be worth it, anywhere _close_ to worth it, then Kurt had to save lives. He had to be amazing, just like he and Blaine had both wanted for themselves. This might be amazing. 

"I have some conditions," Kurt said. His voice barely wavered. He really was good. Between Sue's praise and Fury's interest, that much was clear. They must want Kurt, and so they'd be willing to work with him.

"Berry set conditions, too," Fury grumbled. "You kids have quite the opinion of yourselves."

"Coach Sylvester—Sue—said that you needed top agents. I know when I'm in a good negotiating position." If only for their conversation, Kurt felt in control of his life again. "I want to save people."

"Done," Fury chuckled. "That's basically the job description."

"I want to keep her swords."

Fury shrugged. "Wasn't that implied?"

"I want to graduate high school first. I might do it early, but it will still happen first."

"Fine."

Kurt swallowed. "If my family also wants to move to New York, they'll have the moving costs paid. If not, I can fly them out whenever I want."

Fury raised an eyebrow, but didn't argue.

"And I want an apartment. No cockroaches." He knew he was pushing it, but Kurt also knew how ridiculous the real estate market was there. Finding a decent place might be harder than working as a secret agent. If he was going to risk his life for them, they owed him an apartment.

"It's New York," Fury pointed out.

"Well. Hardly any cockroaches."

"I'll see what I can do," Fury said wryly. He extended his hand. Kurt took a second, but he shook it firmly. "Good. I'll courier over the contract when you're back home. Since now you can actually sign a contract," he added.

"I have two more things," Kurt said in a rush when they came suddenly to mind.

"We just shook," Fury said, annoyed.

Kurt ignored that. "I don't always like doing it, but Finn's my brother and I'm supposed to look out for him. I mean, we're both trying to... never mind. So if I need to help him, I should be able to."

"We'll come up with a less open-ended description for that one," Fury said dryly.

"And... you can rewrite memories. You can build secret labs." Kurt swallowed. "It sounds like you have a lot of influence. Could you help get someone into a university if he really wants to go there? He's smart. He'd deserve it. I just know that deserving it isn't always enough, not if there are people whose parents went there, and if—"

"Which university?"

"He hasn't picked, yet."

"In New York?" 

Kurt looked at the floor. "No, it won't be in New York. I just want to help him go wherever he wants to go. It... it won't be in New York."

"You'd better live up to those swords, kid," Fury said, snorted, and walked away.

Kurt watched him go. By the time Nick Fury rounded a far corner, he managed to smile.

* * *

One by one, Nick Fury talked to the children who overcame his security system and saved the world.

Some got job offers. Some turned them down. Some were pointed outside of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Their futures began to take shape, one person at a time.

* * *

Family by family, they left for Ohio. All the funerals were done by the time they arrived. That was fortunate. They would have been asked to attend as honored guests, the defenders of the town.

Puck hadn't talked to the others about what those deaths meant to them, but he knew they didn't want their names to be celebrated. Not when they'd brought everything there in the first place. They would all eventually move out of Lima, of that there was no doubt. The town deserved to go back to the life it had before they crashed the party.

Before that, he still needed to talk to Finn. Puck stood on the front step and listened to the doorbell chime. There was some black-and-white special on TV that evening, so he figured it was safe to stop by. Kurt was probably over at Rachel's.

Sure enough, Finn answered the door. "Hey," he said.

"Hey. Can I come inside? It's hotter than Santana's tits out here."

"That's pretty hot," Finn said, smirking, and let him inside. "I heard that you and Lauren broke up." When Puck looked at him with surprise, Finn shrugged and said, "Gossip chain doesn't shut down in the summer."

"Guess not." Oh, right. He'd told Kurt, so of course Finn knew. Lauren hadn't talked to him since they'd left the city. It wasn't out of anger, but their pain had ripened. They'd been happy together, and now they weren't. Even if they were staying friends, it was hard to see each other while things were so fresh. "So. You and me. We were assholes when we moved here."

"Yeah, we were," Finn said.

They nodded and didn't add anything more. Saying the words out loud, without immediately trying to excuse them, felt good. Like peeling away a scab. "I guess I can see why you'd freak out," Puck said. "Knowing that he and I had... you know. When you didn't remember everything about what had gone on, it'd be safe to assume that I did something bad."

"I remember it all, now. You don't have anything to feel sorry about back then." Finn smiled, soft and nostalgic. "It was fun. The four of us."

"Yeah."

"So... what's it like? Is it weird?" Finn asked him. "I mean, you always liked girls, and now you just... bam, stare at dudes now, too?" Morbid curiosity practically dripped from him.

"Not as many guys as girls," Puck said. "And I already told you, you're not hot." Finn frowned. His expression veered as he tried to figure out whether he should feel insulted or not. Eventually, he shrugged and let Puck continue. "I don't even know, man. When I was that asshole who thought he was better than everyone, and was really worse, I had this mold of who people had to be if I was gonna pay them any attention. And now I can see all of these great people. Different people." _And none of them want me._

"Give it time," Finn said.

Puck tilted his head. "Aren't you supposed to stay out of people's heads?"

Finn smiled, shaky and pale. "I got possessed, remember? It's taking some time to get my shields back up."

"Oh."

"That's what Rachel and I are doing," Finn said after a second. "Taking time. Her, to earn any fame she gets. Me, to earn... anything I get. Whenever I get something, I want to know that I really deserve it. And even if I don't get anything, well, then I'll know I'm still a good guy. End of story."

"Yeah," Puck said, and stared at a far corner of the room. That was a good plan. He wondered what Finn had read on his file. Maybe they should compare. 

"So, why aren't I hot?" Finn asked after letting Puck muse for a bit.

"I dunno. You're just not."

Finn frowned, then tensed. "Uh, you might want to go."

"Fine. I'll get out of Burt's, heh, hair," Puck said after he realized that Finn had heard some psychic warning, but saw Finn's head shake once, shortly. His eyes widened, and he nodded. It was easiest if he just stayed away from Kurt. 

Finn needed to be a better alarm, Puck thought with resignation. He'd turned to leave, but the door to the garage was already opening. "Hey," Puck said. 

"Hey," Kurt said, and slung his bag off his shoulder. Finn watched them, apprehensive, and Kurt eventually said, "Finn, do you mind?"

"Kurt...."

"We should talk," Kurt said. It was the height of summer outside, and Puck was baked to his deepest tan of the year. Kurt was still pale. His eyes were tiny gemstones or nebulas or... or something poetic. Puck stopped trying to think of the right words. He was bad at poetry, and vocabulary. "We need to talk. And you're here."

Though he looked wary, Finn nodded and left them alone.

"Dad found out that they made him dislike you," Kurt said once he'd watched Finn disappear up the stairs. "He wasn't happy about it. Along with all the other things he knew they were putting into his head, S.H.I.E.L.D. made sure that he would look at you with complete disdain. They didn't share that part before he agreed to the implants. He yelled a little."

"Don't know that they needed to bother," Puck said. "I gave you both plenty of reasons to hate me, when we were first settling into our families here."

Kurt looked him over. His eyes were sad again. He'd looked sad way too much at the hospital. He should look happier by now. "Yes, I suppose you did." After twisting one hand around the other's wrist like a bad habit, he asked, "How's Beth doing?"

"Good. She's got some kind of powers, so they need to find someone who's cool with that. It sounds like S.H.I.E.L.D. knows some people who just had a girl of their own not too long ago, and they'd be okay with taking Beth. They're good. I mean, they're heroes." Puck found a smile. It was even genuine. "She could have a sister about her age. Practically twins."

"Oh. Twins. It's nice, overall," Kurt said. "The benefits definitely outweigh the drawbacks."

So that's how they were going to be, then: awkward but friendly. Puck could deal with that. It was better than the alternative. "So, um, did anyone talk to you about what you're going to do? With your life?"

"Mmmhmm. I think they talked to pretty much everyone." Kurt folded his arms across his chest. It could have looked like he was blocking Puck off; instead, he was hugging himself. "Did that include you?"

"Yeah. I'm not signing on with anyone. I'm just going to figure out how to do things on my own. Sounds like that's how most people are going, really." After realization struck, Puck added, "I guess that means... the team's done."

"Yes, I suppose so." Kurt took a deep breath. "I signed on with S.H.I.E.L.D. After I graduate, I have two weeks off and then I start work."

Wow. The big time. "You'll be great," Puck said with pride. Kurt did look proud of himself, as well he should. It turned out, behind all the crazy behavior, that Sue Sylvester was someone to look up to. "So, uh," he continued, wishing they could stay safely on the topic of the future, "how are you doing?"

If Kurt considered not answering honestly, which seemed to flash across his face, it passed. "I break down sniffling for an hour at a time," Kurt said. "I think of him and it kills me. We're friends. We're practicing being just friends again, and we've texted each other about... about TV shows he can watch as he recovers. But eventually he's going to date someone else. I might want to absolutely punch that stranger in the nose, and I'll still have to smile and play nice." He probably intended his expression to be cheerful. "Or maybe I'll be mature, and be able to be genuinely happy for him. I suppose anything is possible." He drew a shaky breath. "Dealing with this is more than I can take right now, so please don't."

"I'm not." Puck smiled wanly at Kurt's surprise. Whatever Kurt thought he was about to do, he really wasn't. "I'm not asking you out, or to forgive me, or whatever. I just wanted to tell you that I'm not going to just pretend we can be okay again. You owe me jack squat, I owe you a lot, and I need to figure that out. So I'm gonna go learn how to be a good guy again. And I guess the first step is to say that I hope you're happy. With, you know, whatever." His voice choked, and he swallowed. "Whoever."

"Oh," Kurt said quietly.

"Since you're moving to New York. You'll meet lots of people. Superheroes and stuff. Some of them have gotta be gay." Puck slipped into his ego like a suit of armor. "And some of them might be, like, half as hot as me, so you wouldn't be trading down too far."

Kurt laughed, though he seemed like he didn't want to. That had to be a good sign.

"Hey, uh... do you think we could be friends, too?" Puck asked. "Not just friendly? That seems weird after Ohio, but...."

"But we were friends," Kurt agreed. "Yes. I'd like that."

"Thanks," Puck said. He managed to smile, too. "I don't know if I'm really gonna bother with senior year."

"Puck, you need to graduate."

Puck shrugged. "I'm gonna be a hero. You don't need a diploma for hero...ing."

"All right, fine," Kurt said, "but it won't pay the bills for a while. You'll need a day job. And you can get a much better job if you graduate." Puck remembered that particular way Kurt's mouth quirked with hope. "Promise me you'll at least consider it? They've offered us tutors again. We can finish really quickly, if we want."

"I'll consider it," Puck said. It was easier to go along with Kurt when he got like this. "I just want to get to the good stuff. The stuff that...." He stared at his feet for what seemed like a full minute, and then looked back up. Kurt was watching him in silence. "I did get offered some great spots for hero stuff. I turned them all down, because I don't want to skip ahead and forget everything that I should be doing. Everything I _need_ to be doing."

Kurt, curious, stayed silent.

"I remember standing up to your dad," Puck continued. "Your first dad. The way I'd glare at him when I stopped by to pick you up, when you were actually staying at your place. Because that was the right thing to do, and fuck him if he couldn't handle that."

"Even more than Finn or Rachel, I knew I could count on you," Kurt said. "After everything."

"I wasn't perfect. But I was better. I'm just going to focus on me for a while, until I know that it'd take a lot of work to make me bad again. A hell of a lot. Like, 'creepy alien in Finn's brain' levels, because I guess you just can't defend against that much."

"I guess not," Kurt agreed. He studied Puck like a museum exhibit.

"So... yeah," Puck said awkwardly when Kurt had eyed him for a bit too long. "I'm gonna try to be New York Puck again, instead of Ohio Puck. Old Ohio Puck, anyway. I think I'm at least okay by now."

"You are okay by now," Kurt said. His arms squeezed around himself, tight, and then released. He took a deep breath. "When do you think you'll know?" Kurt adjusted his hair, like it gave him something else to focus on. "If you can be that boy again?"

"I don't know," Puck admitted. "I'm not gonna rush it. I want to do things right. Blaine thought... he actually thought I'd let him die to get him out of the way. When no one would think that about me, I'll know I'm there."

Kurt nodded and pulled in on himself again. He didn't physically match the boy Puck had once known, but vulnerability made him young again. "I'm not promising anything," Kurt said after watching him for a long beat. "But when you're him again, let me know."

Puck drew back, startled. "That's not why—"

"I know. It's not about me. You're doing it for you, with no expectations. That's why I'd even consider it." Kurt could look so amazingly complicated, and beautiful even as his heart ached. And god, he was so much more mature than he'd been in New York. Puck couldn't even imagine where he'd end up in his life if he'd already changed that much in two short years. "I'm not making any promises. I don't have anything to give today. I don't know if I would then. Whenever 'then' is. But if you're going to be a while, then maybe...."

"Then maybe," Puck repeated and the room went slow and quiet around them.

Maybe. 

Suddenly, that seemed like the best word in the English language.

* * *

Appropriately, the group decided to come together for one last meeting at Rachel's house. By that point, some families had already discussed moving. Plans were being made. Soon, people would start to leave Lima.

"I can drive you, if you want," Kurt offered. It had been a few weeks since Blaine had left the hospital, and his recovery was going well. He'd just been told that he was capable of driving himself. Still, Kurt worried.

"I have my seatbelt pillow," Blaine said, and held up the small throw pillow he used for padding against his stitches. "And I'm fine by now, Kurt, but thank you for offering. Your friends will start showing up any minute, now. You should be here."

Kurt nodded, and still looked guilty. Blaine hadn't really come to watch movies at Rachel's house that morning because he wanted to see her; she was an alibi. The Andersons blamed Kurt for everything that had happened to Blaine, and they didn't know Kurt would also be there. He'd been barred from Blaine's hospital room when they'd caught him visiting their bedridden son. The two of them were making the best of it until his parents' ire faded, if it ever did.

It would have been nice if everything resolved itself, Rachel supposed, but where they were had to be good enough. Like Fury had said, if everything had worked out in a way that you could accept, that was better than chasing some perfect potential. Being an adult was no fun, sometimes.

"Um. I didn't mention this before." Kurt looked sheepish. "I got a promise out of S.H.I.E.L.D. about you."

"About me?" Blaine asked.

"Whatever school you want to go to, well, you'll get an acceptance letter. Just pick it." Kurt smiled. When Blaine didn't immediately respond, he added, "Ta da. All solved. Yay."

"I really do appreciate the offer, but I want to get in on my own merits," Blaine said after another second's pause. "It's not fair, otherwise."

"Oh. Well... all right. I mean, it doesn't have to happen." Kurt gestured off at nothing. "I just wanted to help you go where you wanted to go." He swallowed. "Wherever that is."

Blaine's expression softened. "Thank you. I know what you're really... thank you." The front door opened and closed, and Rachel heard her dads calling for her. Blaine shrugged. "I should go. People are arriving. We'll talk later, all right?"

"Yes," Kurt said. "We will. Drive safely. Don't make yourself test that pillow."

Blaine looked like he was going to say something else, but instead only squeezed Kurt's hand. He walked upstairs slowly, so no step would jostle his healing wound, and nodded to Brittany and Santana as they passed him on the stairs. "Ladies."

"Gay," Santana said, just as politely. Brittany wiggled her fingers in greeting, and then he was gone.

Rachel patted Kurt on the shoulder as he mimed stabbing himself through the heart. "It'll get easier."

"It'd better." Kurt inhaled, exhaled deliberately, and nodded. "It will, because I am racing through the rest of my studies at top speed. Then I am going to be assaulting alien bases or something, and fighting for my life. I'll be distracted. Distractions will be good."

"Oh, Quinn and I got the weirdest offer," Santana said. "It plays off that whole fire and ice deal."

Kurt made a face. "Please don't say you're doing some sort of weird power-exhibitionist porn."

"I wish," Brittany said, and then looked around the room. "I wasn't supposed to say that out loud." Everyone kept eying her, though Santana did so with amusement, and she changed the subject with a beaming smile. "I'm going to try to be a superhero on my own. I'll take things at my own pace until I'm really comfortable with my powers. And then I'll rule the world or something."

"Don't joke about things that big," Kurt said. "For all we know, you're like a genie in repurposed black leather."

"Hey. What happened to that pillow fish?" Brittany asked.

Rachel's shoulders sagged. "It was dead when I got back here," she said morosely. Other pets were fine with the supplies their families had left. She'd thought a fish would do even better than a dog or cat.

"Come on," Santana said in a remarkable show of sympathy, "it was a _goldfish_. Made out of poly-fill. For all you know, it turned back into foam padding after you flushed it." 

"Oh," Rachel said. That would explain why the pipe had backed up. 

The doorbell rang again, and once again her dads let in the new arrivals. The four already in the basement waved at Tina and Mike as they joined their group. "Hey," Tina said. "So, um, news: I'm leaving next week."

"What?" Rachel asked, surprised. Mike pulled Tina close. He looked regretful, though not crushed.

"My folks want to move back to New Mexico," Tina said. "Their jobs at Los Alamos opened up again. They really like working in a lab, and since the jig here is up...." She shrugged. "But, upside, I can still get a tutor out there. So, give me a little while and I'll have covered everything I need to graduate. You remember how crazy good those tutors were when they really made us work."

"We're going to meet up in New York once she's done," Mike said and kissed her on the forehead. "My parents are talking about going back to D.C., but as soon as I'm ready, I'll head up there. We don't know what exactly we're going to do, but we're going to be great at it."

"You've got that right," Mercedes said as she walked downstairs to join them. "We're gonna rule." She looked around the basement, groaned as her confidence slid away, and said, "Rachel, please tell me you're sticking around Ohio for a while, 'cause a whole bunch of people are heading off right now."

"Sorry," Rachel said, genuinely apologetic. "We're already talking about moving to New York. My dads love it there, and, well, obviously it feels like home to me."

"My dad just _had_ to figure out that he really loves being a small-town dentist," Mercedes grumped. "Kurt, you've gotta—"

"Um. Stark Industries has another R&D lab on Long Island," Kurt said. "It sounds like Dad might be able to do design work with big, _big_ machines. By hand. He's really excited." Mercedes kept staring at him, and he looked and sounded more guilty with every word. "And then S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters is there for Carole. Finn's already looking at house listings on Long Island, and then we'll move into the city once we graduate. We're going to finish up high school there."

"You guys are breaking my heart," Mercedes cried. 

"I'm going to stay here until I'm done," Brittany said and shrugged. "I don't care if I go to a new school or if they send tutors. So's Quinn. And...."

"And I might be living with Brit," Santana added. "My parents are going back to Colorado, but I can stay with the Pierces. So... I'm probably going to stay with the Pierces," she added, and smiled at her girlfriend.

"It'll be girl power until we graduate," Quinn said as she poked her head into view. "Rawr."

"Rawr," Mercedes said, and clawed her hands in Quinn's direction. Their smiles both dazzled.

"And I'll be around until I figure things out," said a new voice. Everyone looked up to see Puck carrying Artie and his chair down the stairs. He set Artie gently on the basement floor, and then shot a quick smile at Kurt. "'Cause, you know, that's my big plan."

"Right, your big plan," Kurt said. Rachel knew something had gone on there, if not exactly what. At least they seemed to be on good terms again. 

"S.H.I.E.L.D. talked to me, too," Artie said with a huge grin. "Not about being an agent like Sue, obviously." When Puck cleared his throat pointedly, Artie gestured obligingly to Kurt, as well. "But I'm going to come up with some design ideas, coding algorithms, that kind of stuff. I'm going to work on it during senior year and see what I can figure out."

"It sounds like we all have plans, then," Rachel said, and turned toward the stairs one last time as Finn walked down them. Without Kurt keeping them both punctual, he was the last to arrive. He nearly tripped over his own feet as he descended, as his attention was entirely on his phone.

"Have you guys checked Facebook?" Finn asked, and turned his phone to them. They couldn't make out anything on the small screen. Most grabbed for their own and looked to see what he meant.

Rachel felt worry churn. Had the town's opinion turned on them? They'd all set their profiles to private; those few who hadn't done so independently had been locked down by the government, and none of them had changed them back. They all had hundreds of friends requests, and going public again would only make it worse. So if something had happened, it had to be from someone they'd already accepted.

"Oh," Rachel said when she saw what he meant, and smiled, lopsided and tender. Their Facebook group for New Directions. Mr. Schuester had left a note for them.

_I know you guys are dealing with a lot, now. Things that are bigger than what I'm doing here. I just hope you all stay safe, whether or not I see you again. Thank you for giving this crazy idea a chance. Don't worry about the choir next year, if you wind up leaving. I've already got a new job lined up while they rebuild McKinley and believe me, I've already heard from more kids at that school than I know what to do with._

_They keep asking me if they get their powers before or after Sectionals. I'm going to have to disappoint people!_

_Thanks again, guys. Go be great. It's what I want, and now that I understand her a little better... it's what she would have wanted, too._

"Wow," Mercedes finally said as she stared at her phone. "That sounds like everything is... over. For real."

"I'm really leaving for New Mexico," Tina said, and swallowed.

"D.C.," Mike said, overwhelmed.

"New York," said Rachel, Finn, and Kurt. The others there looked at the three of them, and then nodded as the current of understanding ran through them all. That was their ultimate answer, too. It would just take a little longer.

"Thanks for being my friends," Quinn said. "Again, I mean."

"Oh geez," Artie said. "This is gonna get weepy and depressing. It'll be the dead people sequence at the Oscars."

"This isn't an ending," Rachel said, and ducked her head when she smiled. She still felt a little ridiculous when she used too much of the terminology, but they were living something epic, now. They might as well accept everything about it. "This is just our origin story."

"Don't," Kurt groaned. "You sound ready to make more workbooks. With glossaries."

"It's not an ending to everything," Tina said. "But it's an ending to something."

"Which means that something new can start," Mike agreed, and hugged her. Every second seemed precious in light of their imminent separation.

They were right, Rachel supposed. Things would change, and hopefully for the better, in ways they all wanted. Their pasts had weighed them down for so long. They were free now to soar as they liked, out of anyone's control and without regard to someone else's assessment. It was almost overwhelming. "So," Rachel said, and looked around the room. There was no more team. They had their own futures ahead of them, diverging along many different paths. "I suppose this is it, then. The official end of the Awesomes."

With a sheepish smile, Finn ducked his head when everyone turned instinctively toward him. "Look, I'm sorry about that. I know you guys all wanted something better, and just... those reporters needed something to call us." Most of them laughed, and a few people clapped Finn on his shoulders. No matter how much he was reassured that they really didn't mind, Finn kept that apologetic expression firmly in place.

Rachel looked around the room, taking in each of her friends in turn. They'd saved the entire planet, and they'd saved individuals, one by one. Now, they were going to do the same on their own, each at their own scale and in their own way. Their powers were stronger than ever. They'd faced their trials and left as adults, ready to take on the world. 

"You know, Finn," Rachel said, "looking back on it, that really was a good name."


	29. Epilogue

Upon moving to New York, Sam first realized that a short trip for Nationals hadn't shown him how crowded and loud the city could really be. The next thing he learned was that he was unbelievably excited to be there, even if he had scrounged up every last nickel to make the trip and even if he'd needed Rachel to call in a favor to land a crummy starting job. The third thought, which Sam had during the first discussion with his new boss, was that he'd really expected the people in New York City to have better hair.

"I'm only doing this to get in good with the team, you know," said J. Jonah Jameson, editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle. "I don't like a lot of heroes, but do I like them. They pay their taxes. But they barely do press."

"Yes, sir," Sam said. It seemed like the man liked to be called 'sir.' "Rachel did tell you that I can get you an interview with her. She really likes giving interviews."

J. Jonah snorted. "She'd better get me more than one interview if she expects me to hire some hayseed straight out of high school to cover... what are you looking at?"

"Pop culture," Sam said instantly, although he'd cover anything. He hadn't expected any sort of newspaper job to be a good fit for him, as he wasn't the fastest writer. Rachel had reassured him of the Bugle's reputation, though: too few writers writing too many articles, since J. Jonah refused to hire more people. As they were tethered to their chairs, he could be useful as a man on the ground, running high and low across the city with a camera and recorder. "I'm totally ready to interview people and get all the photos for your staff writers. Like how they actually got Bioware to debut a game at PAX East this year. Just get me a press pass."

"You're speaking gibberish," J. Jonah said, "and my readers don't speak gibberish. That's for the Post." He turned toward the door and barked, "What?"

"Sorry, didn't see you were in here," the newcomer said as he entered the office and belatedly realized he'd interrupted someone's meeting. "Don't think we've met. I'm Peter Parker."

"That's okay!" Sam said cheerfully. He extended his hand. "Sam Evans. I'm from Tennessee and Ohio."

"Hi, Sam Evans from Tennessee and Ohio," Peter repeated with a grin as he grasped Sam's hand and shook firmly. He seemed nice.

"This is an office, not a debutante social." Sam turned back to their editor and saw him glaring. "You're perky, kid," J. Jonah said to Sam. "I hate perky."

Peter squinted. "Isn't that a line from The Mary Tyler Moore Show?"

J. Jonah snorted. "No."

"Yeah!" Sam said. "Yeah, it is. Lou Grant said it to Mary."

"No, he said something _similar_ ," J. Jonah said. "I changed the wording enough to not count as plagiarism, and I don't appreciate the accusation. Try it again and you two will be reviewing hot dog vendors in Alphabet City."

Peter plucked at Sam's sleeve and gestured to the door. "We're just gonna go to work now, Mr. Jameson, and get you lots of great pictures and stories."

"I'm not paying you to talk, Parker!"

Sam let himself be led back into the main office of the Daily Bugle. "Is he always like that?" he asked his new co-worker as the door shut behind them. 

Peter laughed. "Pretty much. Did you just start working here?"

"This week," Sam said. "I've been saving up to move, and... here I am in New York City! I like it so far. I mean, someone peed on me in the subway, but other than that." 

"That happens," Peter said. "Well, welcome to the Daily Bugle. And to New York! Try a bagel. People aren't kidding, they're just better here."

"I will!" Sam said and scribbled 'BAGEL' in his notebook. With a quick glance around the office, he pulled out the trump card that would definitely earn him some cred with this potential new friend. He leaned in close and confided, "See, I'm sort of tight with a bunch of people who're practically superheroes. And I'm dating one of them. So I think living in New York's gonna be pretty great."

Peter gave him an odd look, but then he smiled broadly. "Superheroes, huh? Well that's gotta be pretty neat."

"It is," Sam agreed. "Hey, I've gotta go meet her, but we should go out for lunch or something!"

Peter looked ready to burst out laughing. Weird. Maybe he was just a happy sort of guy. "Sounds like a plan, Sam Evans from Tennessee and Ohio."

With one last jaunty wave, Sam headed for the elevators, down to the first floor, and out onto the sidewalks of midtown Manhattan. It was going to be a beautiful day.

* * *

Sign workers had just finished the lettering that proudly announced the "Chang • Cohen • Chang Agency" to all who passed by. Indirect sunlight filtered through the office door window. It had the look of late afternoon to it, and that put Finn in mind of leaving for the day.

"Shouldn't that be a line between your two names?" Finn asked Tina as he looked at the letters, reversed from his position inside the room. 

Tina frowned in thought at their door, and her split-up surname. "The guy at the shop said that those little circles are... classy, I guess."

"I think they look totally classy," Mike agreed, swooping in from the side to kiss her on the forehead.

"I just wanna know why our names aren't on there," Mercedes said. She looked more than a bit unimpressed with their attempt at carving out a Manhattan life.

Tina busied herself with sorting papers like she hadn't heard Mercedes, and then finally turned and smiled at her when Mercedes cleared her throat. "Because, um, well... Mike and I thought of the idea for this, and five names would be really, really long to fit into a little door window. Sorry!"

"She has a point," Finn said, shrugging. 

"Hey," Mercedes said and poked him in the arm. "You and me are the worker base for this operation. We have to stick up against the management, or they'll exploit us."

"Yeah, that really sounds like something we'd do," Mike said. Without reading his mind, Finn wasn't sure whether he was kidding.

But really, he did think that Tina had a point. Almost everyone had moved to New York, not in perfect unison but with a staggered desire to return home and join the other movers and shakers in the business of having superpowers. Kurt and Rachel arrived with people already interested in them, and Artie, Quinn, and Santana had contracts of their own. Brittany was content to carve out her own path. Puck, the sole Empire State absence, was busy bettering himself. That left the four of them uncertain as to how they should put their powers to enough use to pay their bills.

An idea from Mike and Tina won out: launching a private investigation firm. They knew about another superpowered firm in town, and so the market was clearly there. Plus, they'd explained to Finn, having a telepath on staff would be a huge bonus. He'd definitely be justified in reading people's minds if it would help save lives. As for Finn, he was just happy to have somewhere to work where he could prove himself. Even if he hadn't been part of their original vision, he was thrilled to join up.

The idea had indeed sounded solid until they'd realized just how many people were in New York and how implausible it was for Finn to scan that many strangers, hoping to find one perfect clue in a crowd. Still, he could be useful. Sometimes. Mike and Mercedes were also solid at gathering intel, even in the worst neighborhoods; her shields stopped attacks and Mike could outrun them. When it was time to zero in, Tina's emotional manipulation could get anyone to spill the beans. Between the four of them, they were able to solve just enough cases to make ends meet _and_ keep their office presentable. (Well, the three of them did that. Finn wasn't allowed to touch any files.)

"Ugh, look at them," Tina sighed as she saw a flyer drift into their stairwell. It was for X-Factor Investigations, based down in the Lower East Side. Even though they were well north, near the Port Authority, it felt like constant competition with that other superpowered agency. "With their ads. And their name recognition." She turned a mournful face to their tiny, narrow office. It was below street level, at the bottom of a narrow concrete staircase, and they could see feet walking past their door. "And their office that probably doesn't smell like cheese."

"Well, we've got a leg up on them," Finn said. "We're government subsidized." Ever since he'd learned that term, he refused to let it go.

Mercedes rolled her eyes again. "You mooching off Kurt's place doesn't mean we're 'subsidized.' It means we're just barely able to pay our office rent, 'cause we can hold back apartment money from you."

Finn pointed at her. "I still think that counts." He went still, and then hissed, "Someone's actually coming with a job, look cool."

A man entered the office hesitantly. When all four rounded on him with bright smiles, he nearly turned right back around. Small and worn, he gave the impression of being fragile in every aspect of his life, including his ability to pay. That was all right: they were building up their reputation, and in the meantime they could help the people most in need of it.

(Besides, Finn could always borrow money from Kurt if they hit a really bad dry spell.)

"Ah, hello," the man said shakily as he looked around. As Finn was nearest the door, he turned to him. With a glance to the new names on the door, he addressed Finn hesitantly as, "Mr. Cohen?"

"Finn!" Finn corrected cheerfully. "Finn Hudson. Hi."

_So who did he think I was?_ he heard from Mercedes.

"I have a... certain problem with a co-worker," he said.

"A certain problem?" Tina repeated.

Clearly not wanting to do so, he forced himself to add, "And my wife."

"Oh, that problem," Mike said.

"I need proof before I start any divorce proceedings," he continued, "and the investigators good enough to get them through normal means charge far too much. When I heard you had other methods, and your prices... I thought I'd come talk to you." That was pretty clearly an insult, but it wasn't the worst they'd heard.

"Well," Mercedes said, clapping Finn on the shoulder, "did you ever come to the right place. Because this guy can—"

"Oops!" Finn said as his watch beeped at him. "Gotta go."

Mike, Tina, and Mercedes boggled at him. "Now?" Mike asked disbelievingly.

"I can totally solve this problem for you," Finn told the man, and just resisted the urge to point at him with fingerguns. "Totally. No problem. Just not right this second. I, uh, just found out that I need to go to my apartment before a security lockdown keeps me out all night. Kind of short notice. Bye, guys!"

He grabbed his things and ran for the street without any further excuses. It was true: the money that he didn't need to spend on an apartment was the money that was just barely able to cover their office rental. Because of that, Finn had impressed upon them the importance of always following the orders of his watch.

Unwilling to risk a bus, he hailed a cab and used Kurt's emergency credit card to pay for it. Normally he didn't want to lean on his brother for anything more than a place to stay, but it was Kurt's schedule that demanded that speed. Finn bolted from the cab when it came to a stop on 59th, a world away from their gritty office near the bus station. Kurt's building was a gleaming tower of glass and stone that stared over Central Park, without anything but glossy cars and horse-drawn carriages between. It was also one of the most secure places in the city, and was a favorite place to stick anyone who was regularly at risk and had the right connections.

Finn nodded at the doorman as he walked in. A quick beep said that he was human, not an android constructed to match the man who'd had his appearance authorized, and he proceeded into the lobby. His thumbprint and retinal scan activated the elevator. When it set into motion, Finn found himself humming along with the piped-in music until he was deposited at the end of a plushly carpeted hallway. Aware of the ticking clock, Finn hurried that last distance to the keycard slot. His metal card transmitted some sort of bodily reading as he grasped it and held for five seconds, and then he leaned down for one final retinal check. 

_Finally_ , he thought as he heard the series of locks click loose, and he pulled open his door. Coming home every night was a _bitch._ They couldn't even get food delivered in that building. Sure, the doorman could scan a guy and say they were human, but they weren't allowed to have the receptionist accept packages. They could be full of poison gas or something. 

He missed ordering from Amazon. At least they could ship to the office.

Once he'd made it through the hassle of getting into the place, Finn was struck anew by how ridiculously nice their apartment was. (At some point it had stopped being just 'Kurt's apartment.') The far wall was made of more glass than plaster, and showed Central Park in a view that people would pay millions of dollars to see. Finn's bedroom was small and windowless, though; it was a converted office, as the place hadn't been selected with two people in mind. He changed quickly, grabbed a drink, and flung himself onto the couch next to that spectacular park view. The sixty-inch television screen on the wall soon showed an episode of Family Guy.

Huh, Finn thought as he looked around the apartment, yawned, and scratched himself. That had been a big security warning. Whatever was going on, it had the risk of drawing some real attention. 

He wondered just what it was that Kurt was doing.

It was probably something pretty neat.

* * *

In the depths of the Carlyle Hotel's basement, Kurt carefully unfolded the green and silver servant's livery he'd stolen from possible enemies to the United States of America. Then, with a sure hand, he uncapped a Sharpie and wrote two words across its front: DOOM SUCKS.

It wasn't an elegant plan, but he just needed it to work.

Kurt shimmied out of his clothes and dumped them into the incinerator chute. The hotel was known for hosting guests of high political concern and had included all necessary amenities in its design. That included a special disposal system that burnt absolutely anything to ash on a twice-daily basis, with one cycle right about—

A flash of light shot through the tunnel.

—Now.

Soon he was in clothing identical to everyone else the visitor had brought along from Latveria. Victor von Doom had supposedly sent his top lieutenant to serve as a peacemaker with the United States. S.H.I.E.L.D. had run every scan they could and he _appeared_ to be human, but Colonel Fury still had a gut feeling that they were facing a Doombot who would explode and take out half the United Nations when he gave a speech there on the day after tomorrow.

Of course, simply assassinating the man with a sniper had its own risk: if Fury was wrong, then he might spark World War III.

They generally tried to avoid that.

If this was a Doombot and it passed all their scans, Kurt thought as he illusioned himself into unmarked livery and walked out into the halls, then it was definitely top of the line. The trip through the hotel wasn't smooth, made worse by his distracted concern over what weapons such an advanced machine might have. Everyone he met overlooked his apparently unremarkable outfit. Security cameras still dotted the hallways, though, and he had to keep on constant lookout lest the message on the front of his jacket be seen too early or they catch a glimpse of the equipment S.H.I.E.L.D had provided him.

"I came for your dinner order, sir," Kurt said politely when he'd been allowed into the diplomat's room on the twenty-fifth floor. It was luxurious beyond measure, with a beautiful view of the darkening city beyond, but Kurt barely noticed. He had a mission to complete. 

The diplomat turned, clearly annoyed. "I already—what is this?" he asked in outrage as he pointed.

Kurt smiled. Everyone in the hallways had overlooked the insult to Doctor Doom scrawled across his chest, because his psychic illusions fooled their minds. 

Psychic illusions could never work on a machine, though.

Two swords tucked securely against his back bloomed in his hands. The Doombot barely had a chance to react before Kurt's swords plunged into his neck, scissored, and separated its sparking electronic head from its heavily armed body. One precise stroke gutted its explosive payload. An alarm started blaring, but Kurt had expected that. He quickly secured the head to his belt for evidence, pulled a mask over his head for protection against what would happen next, and flung himself through the window.

His grappling hook caught before he'd fallen more than a hundred feet. Kurt swung up and onto the rooftops on the opposite side of Madison Avenue. He didn't hesitate, he just ran. The head smacked painfully against his hip with each leap, but he took the trek like a parkour expert. At the end of the block he leapt into the sky without hesitating and without using his grappling gun.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. helicopter was waiting, ladder down. Kurt ascended it as the chopper peeled away from midtown Manhattan and toward Colonel Nick Fury's helicarrier.

* * *

"I'm telling you," Artie insisted to Fury as they waited for any news from Kurt's mission, "it's not a Doombot. Every scanner I built for you said no."

"I know it did," Fury said calmly. He seemed totally convinced that Kurt would come out of things okay. 

"Then why—" Artie cut off as an alarm sounded on the monitor, but Fury shook his head at Artie's huge eyes. Apparently, this was expected. He watched nervously as Kurt's small blinking dot left the hotel, darted across a block of buildings, and then took off into the air toward their location. "Did he have to run?"

"He left when his mission finished," Fury said with satisfaction. "And has a Doombot's head on his belt."

"...Oh," Artie said. It was difficult not to pout.

"Sometimes you need intuition," Fury told him, clapping Artie on the shoulder. "And a man on the ground."

Artie grumbled as he wheeled after him. He hated being wrong. 

"My offer still stands," Fury said as he checked the readings on another monitor.

That offer was for Artie to sign on with S.H.I.E.L.D. full time, as opposed to his current consultant role. It wasn't all that tempting, honestly. The more Artie worked with machinery and electronics, the more his skills grew. He was becoming quite the capable inventor. His new data storage format would hit the market in a month and—not to jinx himself—Artie was pretty sure he was going to be a billionaire.

He had the _best_ powers.

"How's your launch going?" Fury asked when Artie spent a little too long daydreaming about his future fortune.

"It hasn't happened yet," Artie pointed out, "but when it does...." He trailed off when a stack of papers landed in his lap. "What's this?"

"Injunctions that are going to be filed against you tomorrow. I got early copies." Fury quirked a smile. "Sounds like the people working for you didn't check patent filings as closely as they should have."

_His_ ideas were new, but any improper bits and pieces around them would tie him up in court for years if he went to market. Artie grumbled. Time for some redesigns. "The, um, launch might be delayed a little." So he'd have to wait to be a billionaire. Just a year or two. That was fine.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. has a good legal research team," Fury said. "Could have found that out beforehand if you'd been on staff. We don't mind if you invent things in your spare time." Artie looked at him flatly. The man really didn't give up.

With his full powers in place, he was sort of a genius. (Artie used 'sort of' to make himself sound less conceited. It seemed to go over better.) He'd blown through the rest of school, and moved to New York even before some of the other kids who'd stayed in Lima. If things continued, he might well be spoken of in the same breath as Reed Richards or Tony Stark. He, too, might own his own skyscraper in the heart of Manhattan.

He just needed to become a little more familiar with how business worked, was all.

Fortunately, Fury was distracted from any more arguments by Kurt's arrival. Artie couldn't help it; he openly stared at the giant scribbled DOOM SUCKS across Kurt's chest. "Good mission?" he asked with bemusement. 

"That was _fun_ ," Kurt enthused as he unfastened the android's head and handed it over. "Do I get to do that again? Hi, Artie."

Fury checked the computer. "Nothing currently on the schedule. Might be two weeks off or—"

"Might be two hours, right," Kurt finished. 

"Hi," Artie said and smirked. Someone had found his niche. 

"Sir, if we're done, I need to go give my debriefing and pick up takeout. If I don't bring home food, I'll have to deal with him whining all night," Kurt said to Fury, and then turned to Artie. "Do you want to grab dinner this week?"

"Sure," Artie said. "Just not Thursday, I'm catching up with our resident hottie."

Kurt's eyebrow rose.

"And resident coldie." He'd just wanted to see Quinn—they'd settled into a nice friendship—but Santana had been there when he made the call. Somewhat surprisingly, Artie found that he wanted to see her, too. Even more surprisingly, Santana was all for it.

"Oh," Kurt giggled. "Um, good luck with the former and enjoy the latter." He nodded crisply to Fury, who dismissed him, and then headed out the door.

"Wildfire and Snowfall?" Fury asked when they were alone. "I know Lopez wouldn't be interested in you, but don't tell me you're already doing the player game with Fabray. You're not Tony Stark yet."

"I'm just catching up with friends!" Artie protested as he wheeled after Fury. _You make one sex robot,_ he thought grumpily, _and everyone hears about your 'priorities.'_

* * *

"I'm so glad I worked my butt off with those tutors," Tina said over the club's loud music, "to graduate early." Mike grinned at her, and she clarified, "I'm being sarcastic."

"Oh," he said sadly. "Did you not want to come to New York?"

"Of course I'm happy about everything we're doing," Tina said, patting his hand. "I'm just griping about our cheese office." 

Mike was about to respond, but instead stood to wave. Mercedes and Sam soon joined them at their table.

"Hey," Tina said and leaned over on her stool to hug Sam. "You made it!"

"I made it," Sam confirmed and hopped up on his seat. He'd been dealing with his new job, and his dad had been delayed with driving his furniture in from Ohio. "The furniture gets here tomorrow," Sam said excitedly. "And you know what that means."

Mike held up a key and grinned at him. Sam grinned back. He'd been staying at a hotel near work on those first few, confusing days, and told them that he considered it a wise investment.

"It means that Tina and I get our place back!" Mercedes crowed and held up her hand for a high-five. Tina returned it.

As they'd cycled through the complicated dance of apartment sublets and short-term leases, Sam had announced New York plans just as Mike's minuscule studio ran out. Mike suggested that Sam and Mercedes could get a place, and used it as an excuse to ask Tina to move in with him. 

It was tempting. It was unbelievably tempting. But Mercedes and Sam had taken a near-break while they were apart, and they were all still teenagers. Tina thought that she and Mike could be together forever, but not if they ruined it by moving too quickly. Having signed an official lease with both their names would make any issues so very much worse.

Mercedes and Sam not being close to ready to share a place? Having moral objections on top of that? It was all the perfect excuse to set up two new apartments: Awesome Girls and Smelly Boys. It wasn't like they couldn't still date, and for now, platonic living might be the right way for her and Mike to go. It was definitely smarter for Sam and Mercedes.

(When two interim weeks with Mike on their couch had revealed how stinky his gym socks could get, Tina became solidly happy about their decision.)

"Finn's not here?" Sam asked after the excitement for his and Mike's imminent apartment move-in faded. 

"He got summoned by his magical S.H.I.E.L.D. watch," Tina said, with appropriate finger-wiggling gestures. At Sam's confusion, she explained, "He's mooching off Kurt, and sometimes he has to get over there before lockdown."

"Oh." Sam hesitated. "Wait, does Finn seriously not have to pay rent?"

"We pay him less and it goes straight toward our office bills," Mercedes said and shrugged. "It all works out." She hesitated, then added slowly, like it wasn't her place, "And he doesn't say much, but... okay, Kurt likes what he's doing? But from the sound of it, there are some missions that are seriously, _seriously_ hard." She looked down at her hands. "So I don't mind that there's someone when he gets home, for those bad days."

Sam exhaled. "So, how's it been for you guys? Any... bad days?"

Tina caught the undercurrent of nervousness. He'd moved with plans to live comfortably on the fringes of superheroic behavior. If they were too caught up in death-defying antics, he might need to reconsider his roommate, or even his girlfriend. "Just with the cases we solve. They can get pretty rough."

"Even in New York, they don't always investigate hate crimes against mutants," Mike said sadly.

"And kids get taken, sometimes," Mercedes added. Her eyes were haunted. "Not just mutants. They... they make them do things."

Sam stared between all of them. "Wait, on that last one... why didn't they call the police?" 

"The family didn't have papers," Mercedes said. "They thought if they went to anyone official, they'd be deported and they couldn't even try to find their daughter. So they came to us."

"And you found her?" Sam asked.

"Yeah," Tina said proudly. "Yeah, we... we found some buildings and Finn started reading people." She shivered at the memories of Finn throwing up from what he read. "It, um, didn't look fun for him."

Sam stared at his glass when the waitress put it in front of him. "Well," he eventually said, "good thing none of you are alone, huh?"

Tina thought back to that night, and how shaky Finn had looked when he left them. By the next morning he was much better. He and Kurt must have had good conversations. Sam was right: they weren't alone.

"So," Mike said, and clinked his glass against Sam's. "We move in tomorrow."

"My dad's probably not gonna be here until the afternoon with the trailer," Sam said apologetically. "So we might get a pretty late start."

"So, what," Mike began, "I'll have to move things really fast?"

Sam grinned. They all matched him.

* * *

In the end, Mike wasn't able to move their furniture quickly as he'd like. His speed didn't mean he could angle a desk with the same ease as his body, nor could he lift a full bedframe alone. They worked late into the night.

"The plan was that we'd get me a frame and mattress this evening," Mike said as he and Sam surveyed their new apartment. It was a fourth-floor walkup, which meant nothing to Mike. Sam had, after some consideration, decided that he approved of the location, since constant stair-climbing would take the place of gym membership he couldn't afford. The second 'bedroom' had exactly enough room for a twin bed and tiny dresser. The kitchen had just enough counter space for a toaster; they'd have to eat takeout. But it was in the general vicinity of clean, didn't have a notably horrible view, and was only two buildings away from a laundromat. 

"I'm glad my dad didn't mind me taking this stuff," Sam said as he looked around the living room. They didn't yet have a couch, but they had a bookcase, an overstuffed chair, and various small tables. "Not that it's nice or anything, but you know."

"So things are good?" Mike asked. Sam had been a question mark for New York, and until he told them he was coming no one had assumed it. His dad had gotten a new job, but there were a lot of bills to be chipped away at, too. Moving wasn't cheap.

"Yeah, he's gotten raises a couple of times," Sam said. "Not big ones, but...." But they had to be votes of confidence. 

Mike smiled at him, and then returned his attention to the room. "My dad made it really clear that the stuff he'd bought with his money would stay in his house."

"Oh," Sam said, and rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

"Mind if we both crash on yours?" Mike asked, and gestured to the one bed in the place. "No couch yet, and we'll get my bed tomorrow."

"Sure, but it should probably have...." Sam trailed off as Mike began moving in a near-blur. "...Sheets on it. Yeah. Okay. I think you should be responsible for cleaning the apartment."

Mike grinned and threw himself down onto the sheet-covered bed.

The next morning Sam's dad dropped them off at IKEA, and then drove to Costco to make the best use of their limited storage space. "So, how's your dad taking, uh, all of this?" Sam asked, and gestured broadly around them. It took Mike a second to realize than he didn't mean the IKEA warehouse with all its oddly-named furniture, but Mike's entire life in New York.

"Tina and Mercedes' families have sent checks a couple of times," Mike said after getting a cart. "We made a big deal about not wanting to accept them. You know: we're adults, we're standing on our own two feet." He coughed. "Then Mercedes started taking some business classes. Basic bookkeeping and stuff." Remembering, he added, "We also needed someone to go through this superhero training program with the city so that we can license our business. It means we can advertise on their website, too. We drew straws and I got that licensing classes. I'll be late some nights."

"Oh, sure thing," Sam said.

"Anyway," Mike continued, "Mercedes heard that it's normal for a new business to not make a profit for years. And, um, we sort of need profits. We're happy with what we're doing," he quickly added. "It's just...."

"You need electricity and groceries, right," Sam finished.

Mike didn't continue and Sam seemed to take the right conclusion from that: Tina and Mercedes' families were being supportive. As they'd been excluded from the discussion, Mike's family was not. His mom called him, yes, but his dad was still getting over the insult of having a son who'd blown off top-tier schools.

The boys made careful selections to fill out their apartment, leaving a couch for another month's budget, and made it back home with Mike's new mattress tied securely in the back of the Evans' truck. "Thanks, Dad," Sam said and hugged his father. "It means a lot to me that you came here."

He hugged his son back. "You let me know if you ever want to move back home," he said, and then nodded to Mike. "No offense to current company, I just think the big city might be rough."

"None taken," Mike said. They spent the rest of their Sunday putting together furniture. Over the weeks to come, they began to focus on smaller things: replacing the shower curtain with a design they liked. Debating which sports teams and movies deserved to be featured on their limited wall space. Claiming a perfectly good couch from a neighbor who was going to have it hauled away. 

"Hey," Sam said one afternoon and threw a letter at Mike. "From your folks."

Mike opened it and saw his mother's handwriting.

_Hello, Michael. I keep telling your father about everything you're doing. Even when he acted tired of it, I kept sharing what you've told me. Eventually, he had to admit that it was good. I got through to him._

Mike looked back in the envelope and retrieved a single check. It wasn't an enormous amount—one month's rent—but it would cushion them from any sudden blows. On the memo field were three short words: "Keep working hard."

After a few seconds, Mike smiled. "I'm going to go hit the ATM," Mike said and carefully folded the check. "And call Mercedes if you guys want to come along later. Tonight, I'm going to take Tina out to dance."

* * *

"This is ridiculous," Quinn said as she stood inside her new home. Without the help she'd gotten, it would have been difficult to find an apartment near the university just as students rushed in. Of course, without that help, she never could have afforded it to begin with.

Her agent smiled nervously. "What's ridiculous?"

"This commercial," Quinn said, and gestured at the television. The video preview finished and then cut to black. "I signed on to help people, and get college paid for. Not so they could have a thirty-second closeup on my breasts."

"That closeup's only about... five or six seconds," he began, but sighed when Quinn stared at him. "I'll make some calls."

Quinn brightened. Good. She liked having an agent. He handled all the busy work.

A few hours later, she walked across the campus of New York University with cameras in tow. "No one registers in person," she said. "I should just be signing up online."

"That doesn't give good optics," the director said apologetically.

"I thought this was going to be a reality show," Quinn said. "Emphasis on the reality."

He smiled. "That's cute."

Fresh teasers would soon start for Unmasked, the anticipated show that NBC had secured for their fall lineup. Overall network ratings were low, and they were willing to try something new: a show tracking the real lives of two conveniently gorgeous superheroines with conveniently paired superpowers. 

A few dedicated online fans had kept supporting the Awesomes. All of those news stories were neatly collected when the executive had come up with his bright idea, and needed to find some suitable heroes in the right demographics.

Quinn didn't want to do this forever. Honestly, she didn't want to do it _now_. But as Quinn looked at her bank account, she knew two things: she was going to graduate from college without a single dollar in student loans, and, if she managed her money well, she wouldn't be forced into doing anything that she wanted to avoid for decades to come. Even if her career prospects fell bizarrely flat after this, she could live modestly and securely and never feel like she had lost control over her life.

Recalling Judy's stories told Quinn that autonomy was the best present she could give herself. She was more than willing to spend a few years on a silly television show in exchange for independence.

Santana was at their ridiculous fake registration process, too. She and Quinn smirked at each other, and then started reading college catalogs as they waited for lighting and video tests. "I'm thinking pre-law, maybe," Santana said. "I don't know. I just really like the idea of being able to yell 'lawyered, bitch!' in an argument."

"You're going to sign up for classes together, right?" asked the director.

Santana and Quinn looked at each other, and then at him. "No," Quinn said. "I am not doing pre-law. Ever." He seemed to want more and so she looked back at her packet and mused, "Maybe psychology. And they have all these really interesting minors...." She saw the director looking at her with dismay. "We _never_ promised to take the same classes."

"Fine," he mourned. "We probably just won't have much of an academic focus. It'll be more about your social connections on campus. You need to start dating," he informed Quinn, "as soon as classes start. We'll want a lot of shots of your girlfriend," he added to Santana. "The camera loves her."

"I'm not dating anyone," Quinn said, "unless I really like them and I _want_ to date. All right?" She saw him about to blow a gasket and folded her arms sharply below her breasts. "I know exactly what was in that contract and nothing you're saying here is covered."

"Lawyered, bitch," Santana said under her breath.

"Fine!" he snapped and stalked away, muttering something about 'the talent' as he went.

Santana and Quinn waited until he'd vanished, and then giggled in unison. "I think we made a big mistake," Santana said when she'd regained composure.

"What, you mean having some of the most expensive tuition in the country paid for? Or getting big fat checks every month?" Quinn started ticking off points on her fingers. "Living expenses covered, wardrobe... and in return, all we have to do is make a lot of special effects for the camera." She held up her hand and a silent snowstorm drifted from it. She could practically hear sleigh bells jingling, until the flakes landed on the warm pavement and melted.

"All of that is great," Santana admitted. "But are you worried that we're, like... ugh. I hate to say this. It's so _Martha Stewart_ , while everyone else is doing big stuff. Important stuff. Not building a media empire."

Quinn looked at her phone when a ringtone sounded. (Maroon 5; the network wanted them to help promote The Voice.) "Straight to us from the NBC news department: something just invaded Little Italy. Eight buildings are already on fire." She smirked at Santana, who smirked right back when she realized she'd been proven wrong. Yes, there was a real benefit of what they were doing: they _were_ still superheroes, and now they had the entire resources of 30 Rockefeller Center directing them toward hotspots that could use a round of fearless heroics. 

The camera crew came scampering up. "We've got the van ready," said one, breathlessly.

Their new costumes—brighter, sleeker, and significantly smaller than what Kurt had made—were under their wardrobe-chosen clothes, like some sort of Gossip Girl take on Superman. By the time they arrived at the scene, they'd stripped down and donned their product-placed sunglasses.

"You're sure these are fireproof?" Santana asked, and then shrugged. "Well, I guess it doesn't hurt me either way. What do I care if they melt?"

The director considered that, and then quietly pulled the glasses from her face. "Only Quinn will wear them," he said. "We couldn't use any footage of you if they're melting. We'll have to test them before the next field shoot."

"Fine," Santana said, and she and Quinn burst out of the van. As they rounded the corner and came into view of who would soon be their adoring public, they shifted into elemental form. Santana's suit, red and orange, nearly vanished into her phoenix-like body. Quinn's was pure white. It marked her translucent form as she slid toward their foe on a slick sheet of ice.

It was so much easier to deal with supervillains, Quinn thought as she froze and broke the energy gun their foe was aiming at those school children, than to handle NBC's management.

* * *

Avengers Tower loomed over New York, sleek and gleaming. It inspired awe in all who saw it. The residents of that city knew beyond a shadow of any doubt that the heroes inside were the stuff of legends. Surely, their war room was filled with constant plans to save the world. To protect mankind.

"We are not doing karaoke," Tony Stark said in that war room, and pointed at Rachel. "No more karaoke."

"I kind of like it," Steve Rogers said almost sheepishly. "It boosts team morale."

"No, it doesn't," Tony said. "It boosts her morale, because she always wins."

Rachel smiled. Yes, that was true.

Steve frowned. "But karaoke's not a competition."

Tony narrowed his eyes at her, over his sunglasses. "I know. Which is why I'm not sure how she wins."

"Well, I'm very good," Rachel said with complete honesty. Since Steve had discovered that he liked that piece of technology, she thought it unfair to discourage him. Steve Rogers made a wonderfully appreciative audience, and occasionally she needed to take a break to rest her voice. When Steve sang during those intermissions, he sounded very nice on all the old standards.

Tony saw all of those arguments coming. "No karaoke," he repeated, pointing at her, and then began to storm off before Rachel could reply. His dramatic exit was interrupted by Jesse St. James teleporting in front of him, directly into the heart of the Avengers' skyscraper headquarters.

"Jesse," Rachel said, her hands on her hips.

Steve, realizing that Rachel knew the intruder and didn't consider him an immediate threat, lowered his shield.

"Rachel," Jesse said. "I thought I'd tell you that I'm on my way to a Broadway audition. My powers are ridiculously useful for making it to every casting in town. Other people have to pick and choose. I don't have to deny anyone the chance to see me. And I can't say how much I've saved on cab fare."

"Mmmhmm," she said.

"Want to come with?" he asked, and extended his hand. "There's a role that's perfect for you. Minor, but you could get some of the right people looking."

"I am not auditioning for a minor show role, Jesse," Rachel said. "Didn't you see this week's papers? We saved Chelsea from a pulse bomb! I have other things on my mind."

"Really?" he asked with clear disappointment, and looked distrustfully at Steve. Apparently, Captain America's clean-cut appearance had been held responsible for seducing her attention. "Too bad," Jesse said. "It really is a shame, Rachel. You could have been as great as me." He vanished. There was a small 'pop!' as displaced air rushed back in.

"Who was that?" Tony asked, frowning at the empty space Jesse had left behind.

"Oh, Jesse was nearly killed getting empowered to lure us in," Rachel said, waving off the question. "He recovered. I'm... generally glad about that. And now he's focused on Broadway, apparently."

"I like him," Tony decided. "Can you get him back?"

"No," Rachel said flatly. With visible determination, she ignored Tony and returned her attention to Steve. "I'm going dancing on Saturday night, so we can plan a karaoke party on either Friday or Sunday." Maybe she'd invite her friends to come sing at the Tower, if the Avengers didn't mind. It shouldn't be too hard to round everyone up.

"You never let me take you dancing," Tony said with mock offense.

"Because you are not my boyfriend," Rachel said. When he seemed to want more, she added, "And when you 'tried to show me a move' once, your hand went far too low." He grinned impishly and she rolled her eyes.

Steve cleared his throat politely. "Is there going to be good music on Saturday? I sort of miss going out with my pals."

"I'm sorry," Rachel said. "You can't go. You've met Finn." When Steve's brow furrowed in confusion, she explained, "Finn doesn't let anyone who's met him see when he tries to dance." She didn't even bother turning. "Don't say anything about Finn unless you want one perfect note to knock those sunglasses off."

"This is workplace harassment," Tony said, "and I won't stand for it."

As Tony left, Steve chuckled. "Great, Friday night it is, then. I'll tell Thor."

* * *

Blaine got off the train on a bright day in October. It continued to Boston without him.

With so much of his collegiate interest focused on the Northeast, his family had agreed that it would be much more pleasant to travel next to a broad train window, rather than squint down from an airplane or deal with traffic. They'd even added a few trips to his original plan, since they were easy jaunts and he wouldn't mind going to the schools: Penn, Rutgers, Carnegie Mellon. Dalton had a week's break mid-term, and the faculty looked the other way when seniors took more time off for college visits, besides.

Some business had come up for his father in Philadelphia and Blaine offered to go on ahead. As it would serve as a nice dry run for living on his own the next year, his father accepted. The second he'd found privacy, Blaine called Kurt, who promptly used his connections to assure that the hotel in Boston would report that Blaine was there, checked in right when he was supposed to be. Next, he organized a new itinerary. Blaine's new ticket for Boston was three days later, putting him in the city a half-day before his dad would arrive. That should be enough time to investigate the immediate area and make any lies seem plausible.

Now, Blaine was in New York for that secret trip. His bright smile began to die as he looked around the crowded station. He'd expected Kurt to be there, waiting for him. Finally, he saw a man holding a sign reading 'ANDERSON.' Blaine shouldered his bag and headed that way. 

The man cleared his throat and glanced at a small note in his hand. "What were the two biggest failures on the part of the American voters?" 

Blaine stared back at him, befuddled, until he remembered the rants that Kurt had once made. "That George W. Bush won," he replied, "and that Adam Lambert didn't."

The man snorted, smiled, and shoved the note in his pocket. "One of the weirder ones I've asked," he said and gestured Blaine toward the exit. He was massive, and looked like a bodyguard for billionaires; Blaine had to hurry to keep up. "He wasn't sure that he could get over here in time, so he asked me to take you to the hotel."

"Oh," Blaine said as he was escorted to where a black town car waited. It was double parked, but no officer had dared to ticket it. "Hotel?" he repeated. He'd expected to just stay on Kurt's couch.

"The Plaza," his driver said as they pulled out into traffic.

"The Plaza," Blaine repeated, amazed. Kurt must have a great expense account. He knew there were other hotels in the city that were just as nice, or nicer, but it was the _Plaza._ It had the romance, the history, the location. As the skyscrapers of Midtown crowded proudly above, Blaine began to feel that the city was seducing him. 

There _were_ good universities there, he thought wistfully, and brushed his fingertips against the windows. Maybe....

Walking into the Plaza was like entering a fairy tale. The airy lobby felt like a movie set, or even the cliche of a dream come true. He watched the suited bellhops a bit too openly, and wondered a bit too long on what the other guests would do in the city that never slept. Blaine felt almost dizzy by the time he got to his room and turned the handle. It took him a few seconds to realize that Kurt was already in there, curled comfortably on a chair. "Hi," Blaine said in surprise.

"Hi," Kurt said, and bounded off his chair. He hugged Blaine, then gestured to the room. "Do you like it? I can trade up if not. Not too far up; I don't think accounting was happy with me taking out a hotel room for a civilian. But then they saw that old note on your file about how I'd authorized a college acceptance letter for you and it was fine. How was your trip?"

"Oh, it was a good trip," Blaine said. "I have a file?"

"Everyone has a file," Kurt said. "I picked the Plaza because it's just down the street from me. And look," he added, practically bouncing over to the window and throwing open the drapes. He seemed beyond excited to show Blaine the place that had been home for most of his life. A huge fountain was below Blaine's room, and he could make out a sliver of the park to the far left. It was a perfect New York vista. He began to feel heady again at the overwhelming list of things they could do.

"Down the street," Blaine repeated. "I was actually expecting to just stay with you."

Kurt hesitated.

"On your couch," Blaine instantly added.

"Oh," Kurt tittered. "It would have taken nearly your entire trip to get you authorized for the building. A hotel was much easier. Okay, go freshen up, if you need to. I am about to show you my city."

Blaine grinned at him and grabbed his bag. As he closed the bathroom door, he let himself settle with dangerous comfort into the world around him. Each stroke of his toothbrush was like some drumbeat, setting up a song in his mind:

_He's so happy to see you._

_You've missed him._

_He's able to pay for the Plaza!_

_Kurt looks so settled. His city, indeed._

_He looks so comfortable. So... safe._

_If this is what his life is like...._

Blaine closed his eyes and shook his head. He rinsed away the last lingering feeling of travel, but a conclusion battered its way in even as he tried to focus elsewhere: _...Maybe it would all be fine. Maybe we could make it work, after all._ It had been well over a year since his abduction. That seemed less real than this Kurt who was happy, healthy, and living the high life in the city of their dreams.

Blaine carefully organized his toiletries and then walked back out to join Kurt. Maybe they would make pilgrimages to some historic sites, like Strawberry Fields and Stonewall. Maybe Kurt had secured Broadway tickets for them. The possibilities were endless, and the world ahead of them seemed suddenly full of potential. "So," Blaine said, and smiled to match Kurt, "where are you taking me?"

"I have unbelievable dinner reservations," Kurt said, "and then—"

Blaine risked guessing. "Broadway."

"Of course," Kurt said, and laughed. "All right, which do you like more?"

Confused, Blaine hesitated. He had no idea what Kurt meant. It became quickly clear as Kurt's appearance morphed into someone vaguely like him, but definitely _not_ Kurt Hummel. "What?" Blaine asked. "I don't understand."

Kurt flashed through two more appearances, then popped back to himself. "I won't change too far away from myself. If someone was watching on video, a big difference would really catch their attention. They might look twice."

Blaine stared at him, still confused.

"You want to stay safe," Kurt explained. His enthusiasm began to slowly die. "So I'm... just in case anyone knows my face, they won't associate it with you. It's not total protection, but it helps."

So that was what it would really be like when they were in Kurt's city. Blaine's heart ached anew; he'd been foolish to pull off that scab. Kurt was being as considerate as anyone could, yet they were staring at each other from across a canyon that seemed twice as wide as ever before. "That's a great idea," Blaine said. "And thanks for planning all this for me. Really, you didn't have to go to all this trouble."

Kurt relaxed when Blaine did, and Blaine realized Kurt had never considered whether the two of them could start up again. Of course he hadn't; Kurt had seen all those dangerous people firsthand. He'd accepted that life on a daily basis. He'd never think of pulling Blaine into it. He must have assumed that Blaine was willing to take on some risk by the simple fact of visiting him, and he'd promptly started thinking of ways to limit it.

He was a good man, Blaine thought, and the fresh ache in his heart began to numb again. Blaine hoped he would have a good life, too. "So," he said as he quickly put away a few last things and traded jackets, "have you started seeing anyone?"

Kurt looked awkwardly at him as they made their way out of the room and toward the elevators. "Do you really want to know?"

"Of course. I want to know what my friends are doing." It barely even sounded like a lie.

"Not yet. I've been settling into work, and it's a little hard to date when you have a roommate in a locked-down building." Kurt ducked his head. "But... maybe soon."

"Good," Blaine said. And it was good. He didn't really like _hearing_ it, but it was good.

"So... any college preferences yet?" Kurt asked as the elevator descended. 

"I haven't been there yet, but just from the literature I think my heart's set on Brown. I can really study whatever I want, there. If I want a giant program of theatre and public policy, well, done."

"Then I hope you get into Brown," Kurt said and didn't bring up his old offer again. Still, Blaine had the sense that it was there if he wanted it. He glanced at Kurt to confirm his suspicions, and swallowed. Kurt had put on his illusion. He still sounded like him, of course, but when they walked out into the lobby, Blaine was going to dinner with a stranger.

"I also hope," Kurt said after the front desk promised to call them a taxi, "that you make lots of friends there, and take beach vacations straight out of a J. Crew catalog shoot. Or Abercrombie, if you get adventurous." He nudged Blaine and looked down at his pants, shorter than what Kurt ever wore. "You're all ready to go clam digging."

"Funny," Blaine said with good humor, and Kurt laughed. 

"You need to make friends with boat access," Kurt decided. "You'll be on the Atlantic Coast. People seem to like boats. You have to get into the whole culture."

"I'll make sure that I do," Blaine said. They got into their taxi to start his vacation of three days, and no longer. Then he'd finish his college visits, make his choice, and tell his friend what he'd decided.

* * *

Their home was tiny, their big-ticket clients few and far between, but Mercedes didn't care. It was nearly Christmas. She and Tina had discovered the wonders of the cheap stores that could only be found in New York, and they were happily making the most of their apartment.

"Where did we get these?" Tina wondered as she held up three red-and-green plaid dog costumes.

"Pet supply clearance. With the really high shelves."

"Oh, right," Tina said, and smoothed them out. It had been a long day of popping into stores with no advertising, cracked signs, and fascinating discoveries inside. "And we were going to put them with...." She dug through their bags and retrieved three stuffed reindeer. They were all Rudolphs, and all of their red noses were missing. "You guys were great deals," Tina said cheerfully as she squeezed the dog outfits onto their new reindeer herd.

"And now you've got your noses back," Mercedes said as she finished her work with a glitter pen on soft foam cat toys. Soon, three near-identical Rudolphs stared back at them, dressed in their holiday finest. "That's really cute."

"Let's do more," Tina said, and they looked around their apartment appraisingly.

Two hours later, basic white strands of Christmas lights decorated every wall. Construction paper snowflakes hung in tight clusters, and the rest of the foam toys had been glittered and turned into a garland for their small plastic tree. "This looks so cheesy," Mercedes said as they looked around their home, "and I totally love it."

"Me too," Tina said, and they grinned at each other. "When do you fly out?"

"Twenty-third." Her family had settled nicely into Ohio. "Just in time for the busiest possible flight. Did you decide to go?"

Tina shook her head. "My parents are going to fly out after the New Year, when the crowds go down and sales are on. They've never actually been here. They're pretty excited."

Some months were tight, and some months were _really_ tight, but they could see a trajectory to follow until their next Christmas, and then the one after that. Through sheer determination and hard work on all of their parts, they were actually turning their little business into a success. Mercedes was about reminisce over the hardest days past when the buzzer sounded. 

"It's me," said Kurt, and Mercedes buzzed him up. Soon he was at the door with Finn; both had trays in their hands. "Here, this is for you."

"We're having our party at a restaurant, though," Tina said in confusion as she accepted the foil-wrapped gifts.

"I know, it's not party food. It's holiday food for you." Kurt gestured toward their kitchen that barely earned the term. "Both of those need a ridiculous amount of counter space if you're going to do it right, so... enjoy."

"Well, thanks," Tina said. She peeked under the foil and showed the desserts to Mercedes, and found spots for them in their fridge. "Yay, we have sugar."

"Hey, speaking of all that counter space: why didn't we party at your fancy place overlooking the park?" Mercedes asked Kurt. "Wasn't your whole dream for the future that you'd be making a difference _and_ throwing parties in some big apartment?"

"I'll be happy to host you all," Kurt said. "Just as soon as you provide the necessary fluids to S.H.I.E.L.D. for DNA analysis."

Mercedes and Tina looked at Finn.

He sighed. "Yeah, there were fluids."

"Ew, never mind," Tina said. "Keep your coats on, we're ready to go."

Clearly, Kurt's place was out of the question, Mercedes thought as the four of them decided to walk the relatively short distance. Rachel had offered an event room in Avengers Tower somewhat cautiously, and explained why when pressed: they would not be able to keep out any other members of the team. Thor and Tony Stark would bring liquor, and things would get very crazy, very quickly.

That actually sounded fun, if potentially dangerous, but they decided to save it for after the holidays. It would be good to have another excuse to get together. When they were all off on their own, it was too easy to drift apart for good.

Brittany, Santana, and Quinn were out of the question as party hosts, too. Coming near their places equaled being filmed and broadcast nationwide. Mercedes thought it would be great to invite themselves over and talk about their investigative firm on a national broadcast; hey, free advertising! But not all of them wanted to be out in the public eye. Rachel was trying to maintain some sort of personal life, and Kurt's was on total lockdown. The three girls had just barely managed to slip off on that night without cameras in tow.

And Artie's new loft, although also big enough to host a raucous holiday party, was one hundred percent off-limits. He informed everyone of that before he was even asked. They would disturb his precious work and get grease all over his fancy doohickeys. So: a restaurant it was.

Mercedes frowned as she ran over everyone's names again. "Uh, hey. Have you heard from Puck?"

Kurt nearly stumbled, and Finn was the one to answer. "He's traveling a lot," Finn said neutrally. "You know, working on himself. He's not around."

"But he's okay?" Tina asked.

"Yeah, yeah, he's good, last I heard. Now and then he tells Rachel or me where he is. He was headed... somewhere, next. Maybe Colorado. Don't know if he's back or not," Finn said.

Mercedes studied Kurt appraisingly. "Do you miss him?"

"Yes," Kurt said, not bothering to even attempt a lie. She didn't know if he sounded like someone in love, but he definitely sounded like someone with a hole in his life. Whether that was simple friendship or something more, Mercedes didn't know, and she gave him his privacy. It was supposed to be a happy day, after all.

"Sam's back with his family already, so it's just us," Mercedes neatly segued as they reached their destination. They pushed open the door, introduced themselves as the last members of the party, and were taken to their table. Everyone there waved at them: Mike where he sat next to Artie and was happily chattering away, Santana and Brittany with the hands that weren't entwined, Quinn as she pointed out the promise of vegan menu items at this specially chosen restaurant, and Rachel, who bounced up to give Kurt a hug. That done, she pulled Finn down next to her. "Happy holidays, everyone," Rachel said. 

Everyone was ready to say something more, but then the first server came by with his tray. They all quieted down and let Finn start grabbing food. By then, they all knew better than to get between him and dim sum.

* * *

Being a superhero was pretty tricky, Brittany had discovered as the months ticked by. During the depths of winter she'd tested her powers to see if she could pull off teleportation. It was too tempting to stay in her warm, Santana-smelling bed instead of going on another chilly January patrol. What would have been dangerous before their powers stabilized was at least possible, now, and so it was worth the attempt. An "attempt" was all she ever managed, and Jesse promptly showed up and mocked her.

Fine, so her teleporting sucked; Brittany was much better at transmogrification (as Professor McGonagall put it). A handful of snow turned into a handful of mud when she smeared it on Jesse's head.

So: flying it was. She wasn't the fastest flier, and she'd shivered her way through January winds a hundred feet up, but at least she didn't have to walk through any dirty slush. Every fleeing bad guy had splashed through icy puddles while she sailed cleanly through the air after them. Still, that air was cold, and she was really glad they'd hit spring again.

She wondered if Puck was in the same rough spot, wherever he was. At least Brittany had support from Santana's paycheck as she struggled through the first tricky years of establishing her name. (Although Santana told Brittany not to call her a 'sugar mama.' At least, not on camera.) 

New York City had enough problems that she never needed to look elsewhere for trouble. On that day, Brittany happened to notice a squirrel running along powerlines with a pencil in his mouth. She followed him to his source: a brunette girl about her age, dressed like she was some squirrel team mascot, with a fluffy leotard, giant tail, the works.

In other words: Squirrel Girl. Or Doreen. (Brittany liked 'Squirrel Girl' better.) "Hey!" Brittany said as she landed next to her. "Whatcha doing?"

"Oh, hi!" Squirrel Girl said. "Um, I was looking at the monitors at the Tower and saw this icky slime monster. So I'm making my big battle plan and then I'm going to fight him." The squirrel sighed. More than likely, the plan she was writing would involve him.

"Incorrect!" boomed a third voice. Both girls turned to see a man in a red and black costume, festooned with guns, swing down from a rooftop. "That giant icky monster is mine." When Deadpool took in who was actually standing there, his demeanor softened. They'd run into each other before, and by that point felt like friendly rivals. "Oh, hey, Haywire." Deadpool hesitated. "That's funny. 'Hey, Haywire.'" His voice dropped an octave and he said in a rolling tone, "Hey, hey, hey!"

"Why do you sound so weird?" Brittany asked him.

He boggled at her.

"You do sound pretty weird," Squirrel Girl confirmed.

"I was quoting Fat Albert," Deadpool said, close to gasping. "Don't you two appreciate high American culture?"

"Like Cheech and Chong?" Brittany asked.

Deadpool burst out laughing. "I like you." He gestured loosely with his gun toward the rampaging slime monster as it came into view. "Anyway, this guy's mine."

"I'm actually okay with that," Squirrel Girl said. "I just put the girls down for a nap and wanted to get out into the city, you know? I'm totally cool with not fighting slime." She was Jessica Jones and Luke Cage's nanny; not only for their birth daughter, but the other they'd adopted: Beth. It was how they'd all had come to know her, even before Rachel started living with her bosses in the Tower.

"I hate fighting slime, but I'm trying to get people to notice me more," Brittany said. She shrugged hugely. "Sorry."

"Look," Deadpool said. "A guy who hates this other guy owes money to this third guy and the third guy is allergic to slime and chickens."

Squirrel Girl looked around. "There are chickens?"

"No, he's just allergic to them. Weren't you listening?" He pointed at the slime monster again. "And one of those guys—I forget which, by this point—is paying me a lot of money to take that thing out. Don't step on my toenails, ladies! I just got them painted!"

"Okay," Brittany said and shrugged again. If he already had a paid job, it really would be a jerk move to ruin it. "Go ahead."

Deadpool saluted them, yelled something about wombats, and raced into the breach.

"Do any of you guys want to come over to the Tower this week?" Squirrel Girl asked as they watched Deadpool hop around and fire bullets wildly. "Even Thor can't keep up with Rachel's karaoke. And he's a god."

"I do miss singing," Brittany said. It seemed like forever since she'd seen everyone at Christmas. "Sure, I'll talk to people."

"Great!" the other girl said, and the squirrel on her shoulder clapped. "Oh, and say hi to Santana."

* * *

"Oh," Brittany said as she blinked awake the next morning. The sun, still low in the sky, silhouetted her body against the window. "Squirrel Girl says hi."

Santana poked her head out of the bathroom, finished brushing her teeth, and leaned back to spit in the sink. "Now?" She so did not want to have squirrels delivering telegrams at ungodly hours of the morning.

"Yesterday," Brittany said, and stretched. "I forgot to mention it."

Whatever. Santana didn't understand anyone who scampered around the city dressed like a cartoon character. "Cute or not?" she asked Brittany as she held up two outfits, and started dressing in the left one when Brittany pointed to it. 

Their show was a hit: not on top of all the ratings, but in the top tier of NBC's schedule. Season two was confirmed. Fan wikis tracked their episodes, which was how Santana knew that she and Quinn had taken down three 'major' villains and ten 'minors' by that point. Those fans had strong opinions about their lives, too. Santana tried to ignore conversations about her and Brittany, but she did enjoy the speculation on who Quinn should date. Anyone who had ever been in the public eye, whether a fellow superhero or a Hollywood celebrity, had been paired with her.

Supposedly, she and Quinn lived together in an adorable college roomies setup. They filmed a few domestic scenes each week, and then Quinn left for her real door down the hall. The second bedroom in Santana's apartment was never used except when Brittany's parents visited. The network turned a blind eye to all of it. 

They didn't mind that Santana was dating Brittany; they thought it made them look progressive. They even showed them kissing and cuddling. But, as they explained, they weren't about to have one of their stars living in an unmarried relationship during her first year of college on a major network show. There was apparently some threshold of angry viewer letters they didn't want to cross, and that would push them over the edge.

Satisfied that Quinn would have gotten that lecture, too, Santana went along with the charade. A college degree for both of them and villains getting locked up where they belonged: behind all the artifice, they really were doing good. It was funny, she thought as she checked the morning news and saw a story about the Avengers: if she'd guessed which of them would get their own TV show first, Santana would have put money on Rachel. Out of curiosity, she also searched for 'Kurt Hummel' and found nothing. She knew Kurt had saved even more people than her by that point. He seemed happy with what he was doing, even if he stayed as invisible as if he'd been using his powers.

"Gotta go," Santana said after chugging coffee, and kissed Brittany. "Midterms."

Quinn's exam schedule was different from hers, and so Santana left on her own that afternoon. People on campus occasionally glanced at her. They'd gotten used to the celebrities in their midst, and it wasn't like the Unmasked girls were the only famous people there. So long as she was on campus, Santana could walk around largely unnoticed.

The streets outside were a different story. "Hey!" shouted a girl who couldn't be more than nine years old. "It's her! Wildfire!"

"Hey," Santana said warmly as the three girls came up to her, accompanied by someone who might be a nanny. Attention was obnoxious when she needed to get somewhere on a tight schedule, but she'd grown to love all her younger fans. "Sure, I'll sign autographs," she said when asked.

"When we play heroes," the girl in front of her said gravely, "I always play you, and I make my sister play Quinn." The sister stuck out her tongue.

"You are super smart," Santana said to the her-girl. "What's your name? Ashley?" She scribbled that down, applied fresh lipstick, and kissed the sheet next to her signature. It was her trademark.

"Hi!" said another girl. "I'm Olive, and I always play Brittany."

The nanny laughed awkwardly. "Yes," she said, and Santana could see a familiar sheen of judgment in her eyes. "They do, whenever Olive comes over to visit."

For a second Santana felt old, secret pain bloom in her chest. She met the nanny's eyes and was the first to look away. She was secure in her life, yet _still_ , seeing all that judgment reminded her of the years she'd spent living in fear.

Then she looked at the girls.

Those little girls were growing up with her and Brittany, and they didn't think twice about hearing that they were in love. They wouldn't go through the confusion she'd felt during those locker room conversations. So what if this adult hated seeing what they felt for each other? These girls didn't have any hatred in their hearts. Their television heroes were strong women, whether NYU students or an independent hero. The fans followed Santana's love life with the same enthusiasm as Quinn's.

Even more than having NBC's resources pointing them to the right villains, Santana thought, _this_ felt like she was making a difference.

"The next time I see Brittany," Santana told Olive very seriously, "I'll tell her that she has the best fan in the world."

All three girls grinned at her. The nanny smiled tightly, her lips barely seen, and Santana brushed past her without a word. Halfway down the block, Santana found herself grinning. Santana Lopez: Unmasked. Before then, she'd never really appreciated the show's title.

* * *

"You won't be able to get inside anyway, Noah," Rachel said. "Because of security."

Puck sighed into his cell phone and looked at the building looming over him. "You couldn't tell me that _before_ I hauled ass up to the park?"

"I didn't know you were going there when you asked for his address!" she protested. "You didn't even tell me that you were back in town! Are you here for good?"

"Yeah," Puck said. He'd stopped fights in Arkansas, stabilized a crumbling bridge in Oklahoma until trucks were clear, and helped some kids in a tough spot in Los Angeles. L.A. made his heart ache. All of Kurt's old daydreams about a better future were right there under the palm trees. His daydreams hadn't included a band of brown smog or bad drivers or graffiti, but those inaccuracies hardly mattered. So long as Puck was there, he was thinking about the wrong topic: Kurt.

He asked around and was steered toward paths to try next, each longer and more distant than the last. Michigan. Montana. Colorado. Washington. Texas. They wouldn't win anything or anyone, but were places that would make him a better person and hero.

It was coming up on two years since the Awesomes had officially dissolved. Puck didn't think he was perfect, or that he ever would be, but he'd decided that it was time to come home. He felt like a good enough person to start helping there. Hopefully, he'd match up to all the other masks in that town. 

"Yeah, I'm here for good," Puck finished, and wondered which window was Kurt's. He'd avoided talking to him directly; Rachel and Finn made good proxies. If he never talked to Kurt, then he could stop himself from giving his journey the wrong focus. Even now, all he really wanted to do was see that Kurt was okay. It had been a long time spent in a risky field of work. 

Besides, it wasn't like Kurt would care that Puck was back. He'd been living the high life in the big city, surrounded by tons of people. He probably had a boyfriend. (Puck had avoided asking about anything but Kurt's physical safety, but he'd _definitely_ avoided that.) Kurt wasn't like Puck, who'd spent all that time as a near-hermit on the road, only flirting with people for convenient mutual comfort. Kurt had probably gone through big, dramatic movie love again.

Puck just wanted to see him breathing, alive and well. Yeah. Really.

"Well, if you don't mind checking somewhere else," Rachel continued, and Puck snapped to attention, "sometimes he and Finn go to this restaurant when neither of them remembers to bring food home. For all I know they're all locked up tonight, but...."

"But it's a shot," Puck said as she gave him the address.

"And if not," Rachel brightly continued, "then you can just call him tomorrow!"

Right. He could. But Puck just... Puck wanted to see Kurt breathing, first, before he heard him. He wanted to know that Kurt was alive before they started exchanging words about how Kurt was planning his wedding with some superhero who'd never hurt him and had been conveniently in New York all that time. Nothing Puck had done had been _for_ Kurt; he'd made sure of that with how carefully he controlled his thoughts and actions. Kurt had his own life. Puck had no claims to it. He didn't know if he'd still use that big L-word toward Kurt; how long could a person go without even seeing someone and still feel it?

Still, that _had_ been Puck's big movie love. If it smacked him across the face again when he saw Kurt in front of him, at least he'd get a few seconds where it could stay precious and pure. Puck thanked Rachel, hung up, and started walking.

The restaurant was easy to find with Rachel's directions. It was very busy. In the crowd of people, Finn didn't notice him.

"I'm with them," Puck said distantly as he stared at the duo. He could only see the back of Kurt's head, but he was lively and animated, and very clearly breathing. Maybe Puck should have just walked away and not tempted fate, but now his stupid feet were walking toward them. Finn saw him and grinned, and Kurt turned around.

He looked perfect. Puck knew it wasn't because of any illusion. "Hi," Puck said.

"Hi," Kurt said, and swallowed. "I didn't know you were...."

"Just got in. Rachel said you guys might be here." Puck blinked only when his eyes began to burn. His world had been entirely reduced to Kurt's startled face. Crap. He was in _so_ much deeper than he was ready to handle.

"Oh," Kurt said.

"Do you want food?" Finn asked, and Puck looked away from Kurt. 

"Uh, sure, thanks," Puck said, and debated between his seating options. It didn't matter; either chair he picked was next to Kurt, and when he did sit down, their legs pressed together. 

He'd lied to himself _hard_ , Puck thought as his breathing sped. The only total truth was that he'd bettered himself for his own good, without any hope of being patted on the head like a well-behaved dog. But thinking that he was fine if Kurt had moved on... no. He'd still accept it, but it'd hurt more than he'd ever wanted to admit.

It had been years. It wasn't supposed to hurt.

Wrapped in his surging emotions, Puck almost missed how Finn looked between the two of them and colored slightly. That left Puck confused. Finn had control of his powers and had turned out to be quite a strong telepath. With his shields in place, there should be no way he was feeling Puck's emotions toward his brother.

_Oh,_ Puck thought a second later, and risked looking at Kurt: the one person who Finn couldn't reliably keep out of his head.

"Are you here for a visit, or...?" Kurt asked. It was so good to hear his voice.

"No. I'm back for good. Not gonna say I'm the best person in the world, but I'm... you know, okay." 

"You took all this time to just be 'okay?'" Finn asked.

"He's making that call after everything, Finn," Kurt murmured. "Saying it about himself is... it matters." 

The statement made his heart pound. "What's good here?" Puck asked and stared fixedly at the menu. It distracted him from all the signs he could see in Kurt: shallow breaths, bright eyes. _What if he also... no,_ Puck thought. Puck had just surprised him, and that was all. That was why Kurt looked so overwhelmed. Before Finn could answer him about the food, Puck continued, "So, Kurt, you seeing anyone?"

Whatever the answer was, at least he'd know for sure.

Kurt swallowed at the blunt question, and Puck turned to look right at him. He wanted to see Kurt's face, whatever the answer was. He'd accept being turned down. He'd watch it happen. That seemed like the right thing to do.

"There is someone," Kurt hesitantly began, and Puck felt himself begin to crumple. He'd prepared for it. Didn't make it any easier. "Just recently."

"Wait. Victor?" Finn asked in disbelief. "You're talking about Victor? The dude on the X-Men? You didn't say that was a date."

"Yes," Kurt said and traced patterns on the table.

"The green guy with the big lizard arm?"

"He is _very_ nice."

Finn kept boggling. "I remember you freaking out over getting Crayola colors and horns and stuff!"

"Only for me, Finn. I'm not prejudiced against _other_ people with them."

"So he's nice, huh?" Puck asked, gentle and barely sad. Well, that was good. Kurt's guy should be nice.

"Very much," Kurt said, and then looked down at his lap. "We, ah. We've only gone out once. It's not serious." He took a deep breath and added, "We haven't made a second date or anything. Not yet."

"So he's not really your boyfriend," Puck said.

"No. Not really."

"Oh my god," Finn groaned, and buried his head in his arms. "Kurt, ask him and get it over with, or I'm going to the bathroom or just going home. Because you are like a freaking love radiator right now and it's weirding me out."

Kurt glared at him, mortified and blushing.

"Sorry," Finn said, who clearly wasn't. "I'm not up for you making me feel like I'm in love with Puck, just because you can't turn the dial down from eleven."

"You're...." Puck began to repeat Finn's words, but couldn't finish.

"Forget it," Finn said, and stood. "Puck, I'm going to the bathroom until Kurt's brain stops making me feel like I should be making out with you. Kurt, order my usual when the waitress comes." He stormed off, entirely without remorse.

"I've missed you," Kurt admitted after they'd sat in silence, an island in the crowd's dull roar. "There have been hard nights. Not often, and I haven't been alone. Finn lives there, and I see friends, but... but there were times I just wanted someone to hold on to."

Puck met Kurt's eyes again. Kurt's were shaded, and Puck's were full of concern over how bad those nights had been.

"I'm glad I'm doing what I'm doing," Kurt assured him. "It's just been hard sometimes."

Puck thought back to his time on the road. "Yeah. The stuff worth doing... it's hard." He was hyper-aware of Kurt's leg where it pressed against his. "Okay. I'm just going to say it. I think I'm a good guy. And that doesn't mean you owe me anything, but I think I could be a good guy for _you._ I'm pretty good to hold on to, and I think that you smiling is pretty much the best sight in the whole world."

Kurt swallowed and said nothing.

"And I've seen some pretty great sights over these past couple of years," Puck continued. He wished Kurt would respond. "Huge mountains and the ocean and everything else. I even saw Los Angeles, and until I got out of there, all I could think of was you. Every single street made me think of getting you away from anything that made you unhappy and to a place that would make you smile."

"Puck," Kurt said, but stopped there.

After giving him enough time to add more if he liked, Puck finished, "And if you don't say anything, I won't push you. I've said what I wanted to. I'm hoping." The more he talked, the more he felt like he was babbling. "That's it. But if you want to date your big green lizard-arm guy, then I'll cheer you on as you—"

Kurt leaned over, cupped Puck's cheek in his hand, and kissed him. "I still love you like I'm fifteen," Kurt whispered when they broke apart. "I want to know what it's like now."

Puck showed him, kissing with the passion of reunited lovers separated by time and geography. They were in the middle of a crowd of people, but might as well have been alone. If they were making a scene, fine. Let them all see what love looked like.

The city felt like it pulsed around them. Puck remembered his life in those heartbeats: friendships and loves and soft touches as movies played. He could pick Kurt up and run them to the first spot they'd kissed, and then do a slow, lingering tour of every place that had followed. Somewhere above them sailed the helicarrier that had set their lives on a different path; now that vessel let Kurt shine. And right there in front of him was the boy Puck loved. He didn't care who watched. Let them all see something special.


End file.
